Old lease on charges register! Help!

Gg777

Please help!
Put an offer in on a house ....all going smoothly until an old lease (dated 1927 for 99 yrs) was found noted on charges register!? Sellers are the sons of the homeowners and had no knowledge this was on the register. The house is freehold and in their parents names but this note seems to be causing major problems for our solicitor.

He is adamant it needs removing & it is taking a very long time with land registry.... we don't have time on our hands (I'm 36 weeks pregnant, mortgage offer runs out mid August and we are living in a costly temp flat).

So my questions are:

Is it likely if we pursue the removal of this lease that we will be moved in before Aug? So far we have no indication on how long this will take...

Could we complete with lease still on charges register? If so how & what are the implications and risk to us? Can the issue be removed once we are in the house??

The mentioned lease runs out in 9 years....what happens then? We plan on living in this house for at least 10 yrs. Can we get lease removed in 9 years if no leaseholder emerges?

What does all this mean for our mortgage offer? Will they still lend with this lease noted in charges register?

any insight greatly appreciated!

Land_Registry

From Land Registry perspective we essentially have an administrative role and update the register based on applications made to us and in accordance with the legislation which governs how we act. If an application has been made to cancel the lease, we will require the appropriate formal evidence that the lease has 'determined'. This can be a complex area and regarding your question about what happens when the terms runs out, we would suggest discussing this with your solicitor as a knowledge of the law in this area is often crucial. It is the case that under existing leasehold legislation the term will not necessarily automatically finish when the fixed period expires.


Again, your solicitor is in the best position to give you legal advice on the implications of completing the sale subject to the lease, the position regarding your mortgage offer and also generally on the options open to you regarding this. The leasehold advisory service - http://www.lease-advice.org/ may also be able to assist.

G_M

I suspect your mortgage lender wll withdra their offer unless the leease is removed from the Title, but you'd have to clarify that either direct with them, or, more likely, with their solicitor (in most cases this is the same solicitor that you are using yourself).

The LR does not mention this, but I believe there are ways to expedite applications to them where a sale is being affected. This does not mean they will skip whatever checks they need to undertake, simply that they might prioritise the work. Your seller's solicitor can arrange this when submitting the applicaton to remove the lease.

I suspect you need to be prepared for this to take into August.....

Assuming the mortgage lender permits you to Complete with the lease still on the Register, the risk to you (and them!) is that a lease-holder pops up in the future and demands access to the property and takes up residence.......

You might explore whether it's possible to get an indemnity insurance policy against this (at the seller's cost). If th worst happened, you might still have to vacate, but at least your consequential costs would be covered.