Buying Freehold with absent landlord

mishmash89

Hi,

I purchased a house a couple of years ago, and the lease on it is 999 years. I wanted to see if I could look in to buying the lease, so we didn't have to worry about building an extension etc, however I am led to believe that the landlord is absent. He hasn't requested lease fees for years, and this is what we were told when we bought it.

My question is - how do you go about requesting to buy the freehold generally, and if the landlord is absent then how would I go about it?

Thanks,
Michelle

G_M

What address is registered for the Freehold owner?
(assuming the freehold is registered)


For more:


https://www.lease-advice.org/faq/i-own-a-leasehold-house-my-freeholder-has-gone-missing-what-do-i-do-if-i-wish-to-acquire-the-freehold/

jungle_jane

This happened to me - it was a bit of a nightmare at the time but has now been resolved. The Leasehold assocition were quite helpful - https://www.lease-advice.org/

You can go to a court to get this remedied - if i remembered correctly it was going to cost about 12-15k.

In my case i had some really weird luck - the freeholder finally turned up after a few years of searching as he had been made bankrupt and the bankruptcy people got in touch with me. Had this not been the case I would have had to go down the court route as i couldn't extend my lease without him or even get a new mortgage. It was so stressful.

Hope you get it resolved - I was so relieved when mine was sorted.