can i sue? incorrect tenure detail

diane***

I went on to purple bricks , saw a flat above a garage tenure freehold in Cambourn, I made an offer , accepted, the lawyer found it was lease hold, worth 25,000 less than the asking price i'd offered, I did not want a lease hold, Bovis homes holds the freehold. I withdrew my offer stating that the tenure on land registry to her is lease hold.
it cost me the lawyer fee and the mortgage setting up fee , I would not have offered if purple bricks had had the correct tenure, they say they only put up what the seller tells them.
I am £400 down in lawyers fees, searches etc , can I get that back from the seller who put up the incorrect details.?

Comms69

No. You pay your solicitor to check these things for you.

theartfullodger

You can sue: You can sue Theresa May for her terrible shoes. But you probably won't win.

I would not advise going to court. Since checking what deeds (leasehold and/or freehold) exist is free on Land Registry I'm surprised you hadn;t already checked yourself.

Bet you'd have done more checks yourself if buying a 2nd-hand car; 'sfunny how so many of us (me included) seem to forget the basic obvious checks when dealing with serious money

00ec25

diane*** wrote: »

I would not have offered if purple bricks had had the correct tenure, they say they only put up what the seller tells them.
I am £400 down in lawyers fees, searches etc , can I get that back from the seller who put up the incorrect details.?

quite correct, an estate agent is not required to verify the details given to them by the seller

can you sue the seller? Yes, you can sue anyone you want

will you win the case? Depends entirely on what evidence you have that the seller deliberately mislead you. £400 could very soon look like a minor sum of money by the time the legal fees for that case are totalled, and given it is a coach house it is impossible not to be leasehold so the case will rebound on you.

Doozergirl

Any property above a garage that is used by other people is going to have a lease. The lease affords everyone the right of support and protection.

It makes no sense for it to be worth £25k less than a similar property, because any other coach house property will be exactly the same. In fact, they would worthless if they were freehold.

It might be your preference to own freehold but if you buy a coach house or a flat, that is what you are going to get. Even share of freehold has a lease involved.

You need to be clued up!

G_M

As advised, next time pay £3 here before making an offer and check the Title yourself.

Estate agents markeet properties based on the information their clients (sellers) give them. They are not lawyers so cannot be expected to guarantee the legal status of a property.

davidmcn

diane*** wrote: »

the lawyer found it was lease hold, worth 25,000 less than the asking price i'd offered

How have you determined that?

Richard_Webster

Doozergirl - sorry to disagree with you in part!

Any property above a garage that is used by other people is going to have a lease. The lease affords everyone the right of support and protection.

Not necessarily true - sometimes the developer transfers the freehold of the whole building to the flat owner, but this is a mixed blessing because the flat owner then gets involved with admin in. for instance, collecting a proportion of insurance premiums from the garage lessees.

Having the freehold of just the flat and not the whole building is a no-no - and makes it unmortgageable in practice. You should have a leasehold flat or the freehold of the whole building.

It makes no sense for it to be worth £25k less than a similar property, because any other coach house property will be exactly the same. In fact, they would worthless if they were freehold.

I agree. The ground rents of any garage leases are likely to be peppercorns so the ability to collect rent from the lessees won't be worth anything, and as mentioned above the admin hassle of being their freeholder, could be a pain.

Doozergirl

You’re absolutely right, Richard. I wasn’t clear. It’s why I said ‘have a lease’ rather than ‘be leasehold’. Terrible wording though.

Personally, I would rather own a leasehold coach house than own the freehold to one with lessees. The OP really does need to understand what they entail.

diane***

I said it was worth 25k less because another I was looking at also advertised as ''freehold'' has now been remarketed as '' lease'' in Linton from 220,000 now 195,000 , very similar property.
The owner says the flat is freehold.... given the garage has it's boiler in it and the garage is lease ! oh well.
I guess losing £400 is cheap considering the mess I could have got in without the lawyer.
I didn't know I could find out tenure here for £3, good to know, how?
Also I believed the owner/seller, rookie mistake, I haven't bought a house for 25 yrs, so a bit rusty.
thanks for all the replies.
I have learned that idiots like me need lawyers no matter the cost.
this seems to have been the worst property I could have looked at...trust me, i'm giving up for now. I need to get clued up before I launch into this market again, I hadn't realised it's like any other buyer seller market............ stupid really, I trusted the seller...who does that! durrh


OOec...... the seller has kept me in the loop they are still insisting they own the freehold , but now will advertise it ''with a lease interest'' and is putting it on Sharman Quiny as such.

AdrianC

It's entirely possible that the vendor is selling both the leasehold coachhouse AND the freehold to the entire building, which leaves the leasehold garage owned by somebody else still. In effect, you're buying both hats - leaseholder (of the coachhouse) and freeholder (of the entire plot), leaving that third hat (leaseholder of the garage) for somebody else. You could, later, buy that third hat - at that point, you could cancel the leases, and own the entire property as a simple freehold.

Basically, freehold means you own the entire building and the ground it sits on outright. It's not hard to see how that's incompatible with a coachhouse being simply freehold.