Extending lease for garage

Dablink

Our home is freehold and garage is leasehold (it is among a set of three garages under a coach house). We just purchased the property this year and the lease left on the garage is 114 years. We decided to check with the freeholder how much it would cost to increase the lease (informal request since we do not have the statutory right to get the lease increased). They have come back with this offer:

Increase of lease from 114 years to 250 years and we would have to pay their legal fees. Also our ground rent would increase from £25 per year to £75. I feel the increase in the ground rent is much and plan to negotiate this to a lower amount. How much do you all feel is reasonable please and what amount should I offer as the new ground rent for the increase to 250 years? Also can I request for 999 years instead of 250 years? If I do request for 999 years, how much would be reasonable for an increase in ground rent for this when I make the offer?

Cheers,

phill99

I'm assuming by coach house, you mean garages at ground level and accommodation above.

As you say you have no right to a lease extension. So if the freeholder wants to charge you £75 a year ground rent, he will. He doesn't have to extend the lease.

He's unlikely to grant you a 999 year lease. Thats virtually a freehold. If the rest of the block needs developing it means he will have to buy a very expensive lease off of you. He needs all the leases to end at the same time.

A 114 yr lease is a decent lease. It will certainly outlive you.

Dablink

phill99 wrote: »

I'm assuming by coach house, you mean garages at ground level and accommodation above.

As you say you have no right to a lease extension. So if the freeholder wants to charge you £75 a year ground rent, he will. He doesn't have to extend the lease.

He's unlikely to grant you a 999 year lease. Thats virtually a freehold. If the rest of the block needs developing it means he will have to buy a very expensive lease off of you. He needs all the leases to end at the same time.

A 114 yr lease is a decent lease. It will certainly outlive you.

Thanks for your reply. As you highlighted, there is an accommodation above.

Just to confirm, does that mean we don't have to worry about the "marriage value" situation that comes into play for flats because this is a garage? Would there be any effect (mortgage wise or when we try to sell the house) when the lease for the garage drops to like 80 years or close to that?

Mallotum_X

How likely are you to be in the same house in 20 or 30 years time?

I'd suggest that in all likelihood these issues will be someone else's problem.

Dablink

Mallotum_X wrote: »

How likely are you to be in the same house in 20 or 30 years time?

I'd suggest that in all likelihood these issues will be someone else's problem.

I understand we would be long gone by then but I have not seen any answers anywhere online about garages and marriage value when it comes to leasehold which was why I was wondering if increasing the lease at all would be a waste of our money because the garage may not even have an effect on the value of the house due to a lower lease whenever we plan to sell the house.

Thanks in advance for any feedbacks and replies.

AdrianC

Dablink wrote: »

Would there be any effect (mortgage wise or when we try to sell the house) when the lease for the garage drops to like 80 years or close to that?

Any such effect would be seriously reduced compared to a freehold property with a short lease.

Dablink

Thanks for the replies.

So what I have gathers from the replies is there would be an effect from the garage having a small lease whenever we plan to sell the house although the effect would be very little compared to the lease of a flat or house.

Now to the money saving part. Because we plan to make a counter offer for the increase in the ground rent from £25 to £75, what offer should we make that would sound reasonable? The garage is a single garage and there is no power supply into the garage.

Regards,

AdrianC

Increase from £25 to £75, you want to make an offer...? Is £50 too obvious?