Extending my lease when selling

Lindsay.flanagan

Hello,

Looking for some help! I am selling my flat and have agreed to extend my lease as part of the sale. My solicitor has asked that we complete the lease, but my buyer registers it to save on time. My buyers solicitor has refused this and is insisting the lease is registered before we exchange

I am purchasing a house and we are in quite a long chain so I am very worried now of losing my buyer as well as my new property if this does take several months to register

What is the usual process and how long does it take? I am confused and concerned that my solicitor feels the route she suggests is acceptable and my buyers are completely against it? What am I missing and what would you recommend?

Thank you

Lindsay

kuratowski

Very sorry to hear about your situation. Your buyer's solicitor may be insisting on the longer lease because of the requirements of the buyer's mortgage lender.

From the limited experience I have of lease extensions, it took indeed several months to register (in fact over a year, in my case - I think it came out to be about 16 months, but I have no idea if that is normal, it could just be the solicitors were dallying).

da_rule

The Land Registry can take quite a few weeks/months when processing leases. However, your solicitor can ask the Land Registry to expedite the application if there are grounds to do so (i.e. linked transactions).

Land_Registry

Lindsay the other posters have covered it for you.
We do have a backlog of this type of work but do have procedures in place to expedite where appropriate. This reduces the wait time between receipt and consideration from on average 60 working days (3 months) to 10 working days. Then it's all a Q of it being in order and nothing else in the way e.g prior application against freehold title

As with any sale/purchase there are risks and part of the conveyancer's role is to eliminate or reduce those risks. For a lease extension the risk is that it's not registerable fir some, however unlikely, reason. So that risk is the seller's if it is they who have entered into the deed with the landlord. If it's extended and sold for the buyer to register that risk is past to the buyer.

Whilst the seller can give an undertaking to resolve any issues it's really up to the buyer/their lender how they view that.

So best advice is to encourage your conveyancer to apply to register it, provide the details of the confirmed buyer and a request to expedite
It shouldn't take the 18 months posted which reads as if it was a combination of reasons as suggested