My freehold house has a lease on it?

Koicarp

I'm currently part exchanging my house for a new build property. Our house was built in 1920 and the deeds show it to be freehold. When we bought our house we were told by the solicitor that it was freehold, and all the houses nearby are freehold.
Our solicitor for the current move is being paid for by the builder of our new place and they have highlighted (on the official copy of register title) a lease under a section called "charges register" it reads "Lease dated 12 July 1971 to mr jc and mrs ec for 90 years from 12 July 1971".
The property register describes the house in 1978 as freehold.
Our solicitor has asked us for more information, but we simply don't have any. They say the builder may refuse to take our house in part exchange.
Does anybody know if this is a major issue and what the likely outcome will be? Initially I had assumed it was nothing as it was never mentioned to us when we bought the place and we had never been asked for any ground rent.

kingstreet

The charges register covers any finance secured over the property.

If there really is a 90 year lease which started in 1971 it only has 46 years left and yes, that will be a problem.

You need to get to the bottom of this.

tomtontom

Are there any contact details for Mr JC?

missbiggles1

Are you using the same solicitor for selling as you used for buying?

Koicarp

tomtontom wrote: »

Are there any contact details for Mr JC?

Mr and Mrs JC were elderly owners of the house.
They died in the early '70s. We've asked an elderly neighbour who lived next door for over 50 years. She says Mr JC couldn't work from the late 60's and as the family didn't have a car they let out the detached garage to a local tradesman for storage. Could this be anything to do with it?

Koicarp

missbiggles1 wrote: »

Are you using the same solicitor for selling as you used for buying?

No. But wish I was.

Hoploz

The garage thing makes sense.

I think the land registry holds copies of leases, so you need to try and get hold of a copy and see what it says.

Koicarp

Solicitor is telling me that the only thing the land registry has is the sentence above on the charges register (they've given me a copy)- no other information. Solicitor has suggested I find more information, but short of holding a seance I'm not sure what I can do?

bigfreddiel

Take out an indemnity policy probanble cost is less than £200 problem solved cheers fj

matttye

Koicarp wrote: »

Solicitor is telling me that the only thing the land registry has is the sentence above on the charges register (they've given me a copy)- no other information. Solicitor has suggested I find more information, but short of holding a seance I'm not sure what I can do?

Have you looked in the garage for clues? If you can find out who the local tradesman was they may be able to show you the lease.

As far as I can tell though it looks like mr jc and Mrs ec were the lessees rather than the lessors according to that text though, as it says the lease was granted to them.

G_M

Double check. Look at the land registry website for the address. Look for the

* freehold Title and then see if there is a
* Leasehold Title.

Probably not as I assume your solicitor checked, but check anyway.

It does read as if the lease was granted TO Mr JC, rather than a lease (eg for the garage) granted BY Mr JC to someone else.

If so, maybe the freehold was sold to raise money and then a lease bought back to enable MR JC to continue to live there. In that case, if you now own the freehold, who owns that lease......??? Ouch!