Short Lease, 68 remaining years on 50-50 shared ownership house.

Timmsy

Hi all,

I had a offer accepted a month ago for an £80k 50% shared ownership house with Midland Heart (Housing Association).

My mortgage was accepted last week and on the valuation report completed by the lender it said the remaining lease on the house was 85 years. However my solicitor contacted me to say it is actually only 68 and will be in contact with my lender and the sellers solicitors.

Is it wise to continue with the sale? Should or could I get the lease extended as its a housing association home? I will contacting Midland Heart and my solicitor to discuss my options, but thought it might be an idea to get some thoughts of what to expect on here too.

Many thanks

Hoploz

You call it a housingf assoc house. Does the housing assoc own the freehold?

If not and they are buying it jointky with you it is in their interests to have a longer lease - the HA and your lender are both going to have reservations about 68 years.

If the HA already own the 50% then they'll need to offer a reasonable extension, otherwise they'll be stuck with an unmortgageable property in stock.

Timmsy

Thanks for your reply.

The HA already own the 50% so hopefully I can get it extended. As you say it's in their interest to keep the property mortgagable for the next person who buys the house.

I will be contacting them today to discuss this.

Cheers

eddddy

You say it's Midland Heart... so take a look here (especially at the costs) :

http://www.midlandheart.org.uk/my-home/leasehold/lease-extensions/

Do you want the seller to kick off that process and pay all the costs?

And somebody (the seller or you) will have to pay some of these costs up-front in order to find out how much the lease extension will cost. (i.e. The costs will be paid, and then you might find out that the lease extension is too expensive - and so you don't proceed. Or there's some other problem which stops you proceeding. Who bears those costs, you or the seller?)

Hoploz

Timmsy wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.

The HA already own the 50% so hopefully I can get it extended. As you say it's in their interest to keep the property mortgagable for the next person who buys the house.

I will be contacting them today to discuss this.

Cheers

But do they own the freehold, or are they just joint leaseholders?
If the HA own the freehold they can offer cheap rates for the lease to been extended by the owner(s)

However if the freehold is owned by an unrelated third party I've got a feeling you will end up responsible for the cost of extending the lease.