Probs with sale due to the lease

cuthbert_the_octopus

I would appreciate some advice please.

Basically, we are in the middle of selling my bf flat in order that we can buy our own house.

Here is the problem, the solicitor..... or even the buyers solicitor.

The buyers solicitor will not let us exchange contracts because he says that the freeholder is not doing what they state in the lease, and is thus looking for a "deed of variation". He says that the bank will not release the funds on the buyers mortgage.

We have spoken to the freeholder, and if such a document exists it will be with their solicitors, but if want to see a copy of it, it will be very expensive, as we are not their clients and it will be in their archive. We presumed that the residents association would have a copy, but they dont.

However, the flats we live in are very popular with 1st time buyers and probably an average of 1-2 is sold every year. We have spoken to the Residents Association and other leaseeholders, and no one has ever had any problems like this before. (For example, when the flat downstairs was sold last year, the solicitor just wanted to know if the former owner had been paying his maintenance charge!)

Before, putting the flat on the market, we got a new lease to enable us to sell. Other flats with new lease have been bought and sold previously. My bf signed the new lease, but has not seen it since (the solicitor thought it was best that he held onto it!).

The solicitor has our lease, but we have checked the old lease and other ones in the building and they all appear to say the same thing, we have also sent him a copy of the constitution between the RS and the freeholder, but this isnt good enough for him.

Our solicitor is not very communicative, but we think we now finally understand, that he believes the freeholder isnt taking responsiblity for the maintenance of the roof and external walls, as stated in the lease. Our understanding, is that if something happened to the external walls or roof, the 1st thing would be to call the freeholder and that they would sort it out.

We dont understand where the solicitor has got this idea.

I would appreciate any ideas on how to get this resolved....... as we accepted the buyers offer at the end of June, we are also hoping to move into our new house come November (it currently has tenants). Our original plan had been to move out to ensure the sale of the flat and not loose the buyer...........but i can really see it all falling through.

Also, not sure if this is important....... our solicitor is the same one that renewed the lease for us. But off his own back the buyer choose his partner, we checked if it was ok for them to both be handling the sale, they said no problems, it should go through even easier!

Thanks for the advice,

Cuthby

cattie

Sorry I couldn't quite follow your post, but these are probably the best people to give you advice on any issue to do with your lease. http://www.lease-advice.org/newintro.htm

Jason74

You have my sympathy on this one. Lease problems can be a real problem, and we have sadly just had to pull out (on Sols advice) from a property that we were planning to buy.

I would go into details here, but I don't think my situation was the same as yours. It sounds like in your case the freeholder is not fufilling their obligations under the lease, while in ours the problem was that there were not the appropriate repairing covenants between the freeholder and flat owners.

Sorry that probably doesn't help much, but best of luck. I know how disheartening it can be for everyone concerned to get a situation where both buyer and seller really want to go forward, and an apparently minor (to us laypeople!) legal issue causes the whole thing to stumble.

Doozergirl

If you have a new lease then hopefully you will know how long the freeholder takes to respond.

You need to know what hte issue is and then find out whether something like an indemnity policy would suffice if there isn't an actual problem, just the lease not saying what it should or whether you really do need a deed of variation, in which case you need one from the freeholder. No doubt there will be a sum of money involved, but sometimes these things have to be done in order to sell.

I am sure it won't fall through over this particular issue, though it might take longer than you were hoping. Chin up

Richard_Webster

If the freeholder has certain obligations under the lease and is not carrying them out then you sue him.

If the lease does not contain obligations at all for the freeholder to do certain things that you thought he should do (and nobody is is obliged to do) then you might need a deed of variation. Buyer's solicitors usually spot these technical points and require the lease altered or at least an indemnity policy obtained lest there is problem when their client sells.

If a deed of variation is needed it won't be a case of the freeholder checking his records to see if one exists. if it existed it should be noted against the Land Registry title and the solicitors would know about it. it will be a matter of negotiating a deed of variation with the freeholder and he may want paying for this.

When leases are extended, if I am acting for lessee, I always try to get the freeholder to deal in the same document with any technical defects that I do spot in the wording. The difficulty is that freeholders' solicitors often don't want to alter their standard forms and sometimes their clients actually want to be able to charge extra for further alterations! If that happens I warn my lessee client of any issues I spot and we just hope that the buyer's solicitor does not spot them!

amigasara

You have my sympathy on this one. Lease problems can be a real problem, and we have sadly just had to pull out (on Sols advice) from a property that we were planning to buy.

I would go into details here, but I don't think my situation was the same as yours. It sounds like in your case the freeholder is not fufilling their obligations under the lease, while in ours the problem was that there were not the appropriate repairing covenants between the freeholder and flat owners.

Sorry that probably doesn't help much, but best of luck. I know how disheartening it can be for everyone concerned to get a situation where both buyer and seller really want to go forward, and an apparently minor (to us laypeople!) legal issue causes the whole thing to stumble.

Jason74,
I’m in exact the same situation as you were. My solicitor is requesting a deed of variation because of the inappropriate repairing covenants.
This message has been passed on to the vendor’s solicitors, so we have to wait for their response.
My solicitor is advising me to walk if this is not altered, but only mentioned so far that this will cause a delay of a few weeks. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to pull out. Why could the deed of variation not be done in your case?

I’m hoping the vendor sees the need to get this done as otherwise – and in this market – he would struggle to sell the flat. Unless he hopes that the next buyer coming along might have a solicitor who wouldn’t spot this!

Please tell me that normally this get sorted????

Many thanks in advance for some advice, sara