Buying a house - Deed of Variations

marymint81

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice and was wondering whether any of you guys can help? My partner and I are in the process of buying a 2 floor maisonette and there is potential to make a roof terrace. The terrace doesn't exist at the moment but there is a hatch in the roof and potential for us to create a terrace.

Our solicitor has contacted us and said the following...

​'We ​understand from the seller's solicitors that you wish to enter into a Deed of Variation to include the loft space as part of the property. Please confirm whether this is the case. Our fee for dealing with this would be £750.00 plus vat​'​

The question I have is, is there was any way we could avoid paying this fee to the solicitor? Whether we could potentially deal with the legal work ourselves or whether, because the solicitor is dealing with the whole contract for us, we'd have to go with them​?

I did a quick search online and found a company who deals with Deed of Variations but I think they're geared more towards the rental market but did wonder whether any such thing exists for buyers.

This is the first house we've bought so we're walking into this a bit blind so any advice would be gratefuly received.

Many thanks

davidmcn

Assuming you're going to have a mortgage, then any variation would need the lender's involvement - so you'll be paying legal fees anyway as the lender will need a solicitor (usually yours) to represent them.

Is your purchase conditional on getting the variation agreed, or would you be buying the property anyway? If the latter then you could just leave the variation to a later date rather than complicating matters just now.

eddddy

marymint81 wrote: »

​'We ​understand from the seller's solicitors that you wish to enter into a Deed of Variation to include the loft space as part of the property. Please confirm whether this is the case. Our fee for dealing with this would be £750.00 plus vat​'​

So have you already agreed a price for 'buying' the loft space from the freeholder? (From your post, it sounds like it isn't included in the current lease.)

You could complete the purchase of the maisonette, then 'buy' the loft space and vary the lease later - using a different solicitor. (If you have a mortgage, the lender will insist that you use a solicitor.)

But the freeholder might increase the price later and/or decide not to sell to you - unless you get a binding agreement with the freeholder now.

marymint81

Thanks for replying, really appreciate it. Yeah we would be buying it anyway but we do intend on using the roof space in the future as a roof terrace. I'm thinking it may make sense to just foot the solicitor's bill now...

marymint81

Hi, thanks so much for your reply, really good to get opinions on this as we're going into this totally blind! We are going to be the freeholder of the property, the freehold is divided between our property and the one bed flat below.

I'm thinking it may make sense to foot the bill now as we are probably going to face these charges at some point if we want to convert the roof space to a terrace, which is what we intend to do.

Thank you

Surrey_EA

Roof terraces normally require planning permission if they overlook other properties, have you checked with the local authority whether you would require planning permission, and if so how likely it is to be granted?