Deed of Variation to Lease

res68

Hi,

I need to make a 'Deed of Variation' to the lease of my property in order to sell it. The Deed of Variation will require the Freeholder to enforce the covenants in the lease.

My question is: how long should a solicitor take, approximately, to complete this process from start to finish?

Thanks for any info.

princeofpounds

The timescale is likely to be determined by the freeholder, not the solicitor.

If the freeholder is co-operative, a couple of weeks perhaps, depending on other workload. If not... how long is a piece of string?

What makes you think your freeholder is going to agree to vary the lease?

res68

I'm pretty sure the freeholder would be willing, and in previous dealings with him have found him to respond to communication quickly and efficiently.

I'm concerned that my solicitor has not made any progress despite this. The plan is to obtain a draft wording from the freeholder (for a fee). I would not expect this to take long, but have been waiting a while now. I'm just wondering what I can do to speed up the process, as it is getting in the way of a quick sale...

propertyman

If you have a mortgage then you will need the lender's consent and their legal team to be involved too. I suggest that you instruct your solicitors now and have it agreed and tie it into the sale.

princeofpounds

In that case it's simply a matter of the solicitor's backlog. The probably need a couple of hours to make up the draft and send it to the freeholder, but they will have many other jobs on the go and your couple of hours may not come up for a couple of weeks.

Best thing to do is to ask them, push a little.