Buying a leasehold house, does it cost more or cause problems?

Land_Registry

sheila195 wrote: »

i have recently brought my leasehold to become a freeholder, £7,500 later!! i might add, but since getting in touch with the Land registry even though they have taken my cheque of £40 out of the bank (beginning of August) it still takes 3 months to complete
Does anyone know if this correct?

The are delays currently on a number of types of application so 3 months is not an unusual estimate to give.

In most cases the speed with which such a change is registered has little or no impact on the buyer/owner. However where there is an urgency, for example a linked transaction such as an onward sale or a mortgage to be secured then we can consider requests to expedite the registration process.

As far as the OP is concerned in my experience buying a leasehold property can cost more as the conveyancing will involve covering the leasehold/freehold link and the lease itself and it's clauses/provisions etc.

From a registration perspective the fee is based on the purchase price so the class of title makes no difference. If at some point you manage to buy the freehold then this will indeed lead to an additional registration cost as in Sheila145's example, namely £40 in most cases as the value of the freehold, with a lease in play, is invariably low.

LJS2014

Ft01 wrote: »

The area in which I am looking to buy a house has a large number of properties that are on long leases with a tiny amount of ground rent.
My reading left me with the impression that after a year you can buy the freehold and it tends to cost relatively little to do that-its something I would definitely want to do.

Does a house being a leasehold as oppose to freehold property cause any additional problems/fees when it comes to the buying process?

We've just bought a leasehold house, 900+ years left on lease and £3.50 a year ground rent. There was an issue our solicitor found where the lease referenced a "head lease" which could not be found but eventually turned up so this added a bit of time to the conveyancing process, we also incurred an additional cost of about £70 for changing the names on the lease. Like you, the area we looked in, only a very small percentage of houses we viewed were freehold but we plan to buy it if/when it's offered to us.