leasehold >>> freehold

rutar1

summary I am purchasing a house for £400k + where Currently The vendors have a 50% leasehold with 76 years remaining under shared ownership. I have a solicitor already but I am not sure if I am getting the correct advice/service. He has sent me the message below. I have done some reading on the subject and am now more confused! It appears that each shared ownership scheme has different rules/conditions for selling the property on (such as the housing association has to find a buyer or there is a certain time period before one can sell). I understand that a valuation has be done by the freeholder.
My question is will I be able to get the freehold easily and quickly?

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The property is currently a leasehold property with a 50% shared ownership. The lease provides for the leaseholder to stair case to 100% ownership and on written notice the freehold would be transferred to the leaseholder.
This will require us carrying out additional work to ensure that the seller complies with the requirements of the freeholder to ultimately sell the freehold property to you.

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steeeb

Sounds like on completion its being staircased to 100% and youll be buying the freehold.

Solicitor is saying youll have more costs as they need to do more work to ensure it is done correctly.

rutar1

It may be a difficult question to answer but whats generally the timescale for staircasing?

Richard_Webster

Sometimes the lease wording effectively prevents a seller staircasing to 100% and immediately selling - he may have to wait 3 months after staircasing before he can sell. Your solicitors should urgently check the lease to make sure this is not the case.

It is not unreasonable that they charge more because they have to check the details. If your sellers did not make it clear that the transaction involved staircasing then you can reasonably ask them to pay the extra costs - you could reasonably have expected to be buying a normal property where none of this shared ownership aspect was involved.

Grant_Urismo

rutar1 wrote: »

It may be a difficult question to answer but whats generally the timescale for staircasing?

I can only give you my example, but we sent the notice informing the housing association that we wanted to go to 100% on the 5th of November, and 3 missed completion days later it's still not happened.

The housing association get an extra day's rent out of us for each day they delay, so guess what they are doing?

boundy

I've recently checked my lease on my shared ownership house and it says I can sell the my share and the buyers can do a back to back staircasing to 100% and the free hold will be transferred on completion. I believe that recent shared ownership leases from the last 5 years must follow the Homes and Communities guidelines for the government funding, so will hopefully be the same for yours. They have also removed the old preemption clause of offering it back to the housing association for 21 years after final staircasing.

More info here, but you need to check your lease
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/capital-funding-guide/1-help-to-buy-shared-ownership