Estate agent lied to me about length of lease - advice?

bobobski

The benefit in having a share of the management company is that you have some control over service costs; owning a long lease, the highest ongoing cost will be service charge. However, that does rather depend on the members of the ManCo being proactive in organising such services; the downside is that if the members (i.e. tenants) don't organise services because they all have day jobs etc, they won't be done. I'd ask around the tenants to ascertain who actually runs the ManCo on a daily basis - usually people try to grab the only lawyer in the building to do so!

In my understanding, "share of freehold" just means the same as the ManCo as above, but with the additional point that the ManCo owns the freehold. Nothing else really. The effect is that you are a member of your landlord, which should (in theory) make lease extensions easier, but makes less of a difference day-to-day.

Caveat: I'm a property solicitor, but I work in the commercial sphere. I have been involved only with a couple of residential sales/purchases, which did have the ManCo/share of freehold structure, but I'm not overly qualified here.