Flying Freehold Problems

Hlbrookes

My husband is currently trying to remortgage his house and is running into problems with the flying freehold. It's an 1860s cottage, our neighbour owns the attic and my husband owns the two floors underneath and a small extension out the back. Although the property was left to him by his grandmother he took out a small mortgage on it to fund a renovation 12 years ago and had no problems, however this time round the surveyor hasn't valued it because he said it doesn't meet the lenders criteria. The surveyor has stated that the property has a 45% flying freehold, our solicitor can't work out how he got to this figure and believes that the flying freehold makes up less than 33% of the property. The lender is standing by the survey and has now refused to lend despite all the covenants being in place and an offer of indemnity insurance being made as they say they won't lend on over 35% flying freehold. We're now trying a different lender but we're worried the same thing is going to happen again.

I can't seem to find any information on this form of flying freehold and want to know if any one knows of anything similar and could advise me:

1. The common problem with flying freeholds is lack of access for repairs and we don't have this problem as the flying freehold comes over the top of us and my husband owns all the land our property stands on. As we pay for two thirds of the costs of the roof repairs and can access the roof from our garden it has never been an issue. The room above our property is a bedroom. It's an unusual arrangement but not as bad as next doors situation so why did the surveyor think it was so awful?

2. How did they work out that we have a 45% flying freehold? My mortgage broker has tried to find out how the surveyor has come to this conclusion but the surveyor has refused to speak to him and the lender doesn't seem to have a clue what's going on.

Our broker and solicitor are both baffled and it's extremely frustrating! Even my husband's existing lender will no longer lend on flying freeholds! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

princeofpounds

1. The common problem with flying freeholds is lack of access for repairs and we don't have this problem as the flying freehold comes over the top of us and my husband owns all the land our property stands on. As we pay for two thirds of the costs of the roof repairs and can access the roof from our garden it has never been an issue. The room above our property is a bedroom. It's an unusual arrangement but not as bad as next doors situation so why did the surveyor think it was so awful?

All of this practical stuff is not that relevant. It is not just about physical access to repairs, not at all. As well as real world complications, it also has legal, insurance and saleability complications.

2. How did they work out that we have a 45% flying freehold? My mortgage broker has tried to find out how the surveyor has come to this conclusion but the surveyor has refused to speak to him and the lender doesn't seem to have a clue what's going on.

They probably just eyeballed it. The likelihood is that the surveyor you were unlucky enough to get doesn't want the complication of dealing with it, and having it as a future liability. Find another lender with a different surveyor. Make an official complaint if you want, but it'll be the slow way of resolving things.

seven-day-weekend

I understand that if you own the floors/land below then you have a creeping freehold and the property above has the flying freehold.

We have a similar setup, part of the neighbours' bedrooms (a strip about a metre wide and six metres long) comes over an alleyway which is ours and gives us access to the back of our house, it solely for our use, totally within our boundary and no-one else has right of way.

We were told by someone on this forum that should we come to sell then we should not have a problem with the creeping freehold because we do not depend upon our neighbours' house to hold ours up and there is not a problem for us with access. Hope this is true as we may be selling up.

This link may help:

http://www.conveyancing-warehouse.com/guides/flying-freehold.html