What would you do in my shoes? Leasehold flat purchase

sydenhambased

Hi all,

I'm reaching the end of my tether.

Background:

13th May: Offer accepted by freeholder for leasehold flat.
16th May: Draft lease requested by our solicitor, plus a copy of lease for the other flat in the building (leasehold owned by someone else) - to check the two match, roughly speaking.
21st May: Lease presented to our solicitor, who raised various queries within 24 hours. No sign of lease for other flat in building.
End of May: Survey and searches done, plus formal mortgage offer received.
Mid June: Second draft of lease bounced each way between solicitors.
2nd July: Same queries as before raised by our solicitor.
10th July: Third draft sent over to our solicitor, with many of the same issues still in place. Also sent to myself and estate agent, as I'm now increasingly frustrated.
14th July: Same queries as before raised by our solicitor.

The main issues with the lease are as follows:

1. Freeholder's responsibilities all depend on Service Charge being paid by Leaseholder, but elsewhere it's stipulated that no Service Charge is to be paid. This gives the Freeholder the right to shirk all responsibilities.
2. The Buildings Insurance is the responsibility of the Leaseholder, NOT the Freeholder. Playing devil's advocate (as that's what my solicitor's doing) IF the other Leaseholder DOESN'T have Buildings Insurance for her property and it falls down (pulling us down with it) we would have no legal recourse as we have no contract with her. This is therefore unsatisfactory and doesn't fulfil our (any) lender's requirements.

The smaller issues with the lease are as follows:

1. The premium (price payable) is listed correctly as "£250,000" but then states "(Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds)".
2. One of the Schedules has obviously had clauses removed but the remaining clauses haven't been renumbered e.g. there's a 4.4 and a 4.6 but no 4.5.
3. The final page, where all of our names are printed (to sign for exchange) have both my name and my OH's name mis-spelt. Not even common names or common mis-spellings; just typos.

Each draft seems to retain mistakes from the previous draft!

We're in rented accommodation currently, and our tenancy ends on the 1st of August. Naturally we've spoken to our landlady and she's said that we can roll on for another few weeks, so we have a tiny bit of leeway there, but is there anything we can do to speed up this process? The estate agent is fed up to the back teeth with the vendor and his solicitors, but rarely answers his phone and doesn't seem to be terribly pro-active. I'm pestering my solicitor a couple of times a week but that doesn't seem to be helping either.

I'm tempted to phone the agent and tell him this needs to be sorted by the end of next week (7 days) or we'll have to pull out, but that would put us in a corner if a week goes by and they say "just a few more days, promise".

Any advice?

P.S. Though the Freeholder's selling us the flat (lease), the Freehold is NOT for sale.

Monday123

I think your own suggestion is good, set a timeline for these issues to be resolved, with your living situation as the reason behind these timelines. Other than that, chase, chase and chase. Towards the end of my purchase I would be contacting my solicitor not a couple of times a week, but a couple of times a day! I'm sure they're used to this kind of pestering, and they're your only route to the buyers' solicitors, other than the EA.

So make a point of chasing both your solicitors and the EA at LEAST on a daily basis.

camptownraces

Well, you've been shown the lease, and you know what your solicitor thinks is wrong with the balance of responsibilities between the freeholder and the two leaseholders.
Am presuming at this stage your sol has seen other flat's lease. Any alterations to "your" lease could entail alterations to the "other" lease - and NOBODY can force that on other leaseholder.

What, according to "your" lease, are the freeholder's responsibilities? If he won't do insurance, will he maintain the fabric?

Sounds like an impossible situation, and you should listen carefully to your solicitor's advice.

Frustrating though the situation is, don't make a total pest of yourself by calling and emailing several times a day. You won't get the answers any faster, you'll just grind up bad feeling with the solicitor's secretary.

Equally, I'd doubt if there is any point in constantly pestering the estate agent, as they have very little knowledge of the law, and they won't have seen the lease. All they could do is warn their client about the apparent stalemate, which of course would be obvious to that client in any case.

sydenhambased

I suspect "our" lease has been drafted without any regard for the "other" lease. "Our" lease is a new lease that seems to be very similar to other work product of the vendor's solicitors (according to Google!), whereas what the other leaseholder has is the original lease from 1984 (when the building was converted). It may very well be that she also has a revised lease that she couldn't immediately lay her hands on when we knocked on her door, but I don't know any more than that.

"Our" lease DOES stipulate that the freeholder's responsible for the communal areas and fabric of the building, but each clause in the lessor's covenants starts "If (but only if) the lessee pays the service charge". The whole list of lessor's (freeholder's) covenants is therefore null and void (according to our solicitor).

When new versions of the lease have come through, our solicitor's always been straight on the phone to explain that it's still "not legally correct", so I'm not minded to pester her or her secretary on a daily basis, let alone several times a day.

katejo

Monday123 wrote: »

I think your own suggestion is good, set a timeline for these issues to be resolved, with your living situation as the reason behind these timelines. Other than that, chase, chase and chase. Towards the end of my purchase I would be contacting my solicitor not a couple of times a week, but a couple of times a day! I'm sure they're used to this kind of pestering, and they're your only route to the buyers' solicitors, other than the EA.

So make a point of chasing both your solicitors and the EA at LEAST on a daily basis.

You mean the seller's solicitor?
I agree re. chasing. When I had a leasehold flat, I had constant problems with the freeholder re. buildings insurance. Thank God no claim was ever needed. I had to sign documents for my mortgage lender to confirm that I had buildings insurance but the freeholder refused point blank to provide it. Not quite the same situation but it caused me (and the other leaseholder) real problems. I will never buy leasehold again.

sydenhambased

In this instance our solicitor won't let us proceed unless this insurance thing gets sorted - her argument is that unless the freeholder sorts the buildings insurance it's impossible for the lender to protect their asset (which for the first few years is what it'll be).

I've told the Estate Agent they need to get on to the vendor ASAP and I need to see movement by Friday 25th, or the deal's off. I'm not holding my breath...