Legal Qu: Valid Assignment of S.42 Lease Extension

strawberries1

I'm a FTB buying a leasehold ppty with 73yrs. Seller happy to serve notice but wants me to bear all costs for it etc; no problem.

I have conveyancers dealing with my purchase but I'm not confident of their lease extension expertise and I worry that the LL will pick holes somewhere.


We're about to exchange and below are bits of the S.42 Notice, Assignment and Rider attached to the contract I'll like comments on.


1. On the S.42 Notice the tenant/seller's solicitors are down as acting for him and his address for service is his home address (another property). Is this ok as upon completion the LL will be notified of the assignment so they'll send responses to me or do I have to expressly request that?

2. The contract is standard but now have these two clauses inserted at the end and a rider attached:

18. In accordance with the attached rider, the seller shall before completion serve a S.42 Notice on the Landlord in the form attached and will on completion assign the benefit of that Notice to the Buyer in the form attached for no additional consideration.

19. The Seller and Buyer agree the rider attached.

Below is the Rider although I'm not sure about 1.1:

1.1 In this clause, “the tenant’s Notice of Claim” means the notice to be served on the Landlord in accordance with clause 1.2 of this clause.


1.2 Before the completion date, the Seller will sign a notice under the provisions of Section 42 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 (“the 1993 Act”) of his claim to acquire a new lease of the Property in accordance with the copy Notice attached and return the same to the Buyer who may serve the same on the competent Landlord.

1.3 The Seller will by Deed of Assignment (in the form annexed hereto) provided by the Buyer assign on the same date as the transfer of the Property to the Buyer the benefit of the tenant’s Notice of Claim.

1.4 The Seller will not without first consulting the Buyer enter into any negotiations with the Landlord to fix the price payable for the acquisition of the new lease of the Property or any terms of the new lease.

1.5 No agreement as to purchase price for the acquisition of the new lease of the Property is to be made nor any terms of the new lease agreed between the Sellers and the Landlord without the written agreement of the Buyer-

1.6 The Buyer will pay the deposit required of the Landlord pursuant to paragraph 2(2) of Schedule II to the Leasehold Reform (Collective Enfranchisement and Leasehold Renewal) Regulations 1993.

1.7 The parties agree that:

The Seller shall not expressly withdraw the Notice and Claim and shall not do anything which shall cause the Notice of Claim to be deemed withdrawn.

The Seller will not enter into further negotiations with the Landlord to fix the premium payable for the acquisition of the new Lease of the Property or any terms of the new Lease.

The Buyer will formally discharge the statutory obligations arising from the Notice of Claim including for the avoidance of doubt the landlord’s solicitors’ and surveyor’s recoverable statutory costs.

1.8 The provisions of this agreement shall not merge upon completion insofar as the obligations hereunder remain to be performed.

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Has you solicitor checked that the notice is valid, is being served on the right person at the right address? Don't assume the names and addresses in the lease are the right ones.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]I am not quite sure about the procedure outlined in 1.2 that the seller will return the signed notice to you and you may(why may?) serve the same on the competent landlord.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You can't do that, only the current tenant can 'serve' the notice and only whilst they still own the flat. It maybe you are just in the loop to make sure the notice gets sent recorded delivery etc.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]I am not sure how long you plan between exchange and completion but you will probably want any reply, communication or counter notice sent by the landlord sent on to you straight away and for the current tenant to take any further action, as directed by you, to protect the strict timetable if completion is taking that long.[/FONT]

strawberries1

Thank you.
Although 1.2 says the seller shall sign and send the S.42 to us to serve we've agreed that the seller will serve the S.42 notice then we'll exchange and complete on Thursday. I've used their registered address as found on companies house.