low leasehold properties

cluelessoncanvey

Hi, I rang up an EA today about a nice looking flat on the market, thing is its lease is 73 years. Looking at its history last time it was on th emarket was 2009 and the price has only rised 5K since then.

Made me wonder about the situation of getting it and then getting a loan or upping the mortgage amount when you remortgage to pay the 10K+ it costs to extend a leasehold. Is that easy to do or not? Obviously once the lease is sorted the value of the flat would go up and would hopefully recompensate for the initial mortgage increase that way. But how long would it take to pay off say 15k off your mortgage (111k paying £550 a month at a guess) to assumably then be able to go back to the max again to sort the situation out, are you able to do that.

TrickyDicky101

Assuming a repayment term of 25 years at a rate of c.3.4% then it would take you around 5 years to repay £15k of capital with monthly repayments of £550.

The cost of increasing the lease will increase significantly over those 5 years too.

cluelessoncanvey

So I assume that would mean it'd be 5 years before I paid off enough mortgage to allow me to remortgage back to the max allwoed again (which my mortgage would be in this scenario), assuming they'd let me.

Thanks for the advice, takes longer than I thought, os may not be a viable idea. Can see why everyone avoids them on the market then they end up going to auction.

I know the price I am looking at will probably either be low leasehold or needs work, and low leasehold means may not be able to get a great mortgage as limited to lenders that'll lend for 73 year lease.

I was tempted by this place as it looks lovely in the photos, but sounds like I am best waiting for something else to come along. Hope eventually will see a cheap place with a decent leasehold that hopefully wont be too costly to do up if necessary - i know i am lazy though and once I've moved in will probably keep putting off getting things done, especially at the beginning as i try and get on top of bills etc, as a FTB won't know how much its all going to cost me until it hits me!