Is there any reason to buy the freehold?

zagubov

united4ever wrote: »

I see, is negotiation common when buying a freehold? Could I counter offer their offer?

If I were you I'd bite their hand off. It'll make your house easier to sell.

At the moment it simply doesn't exist as far as most buyers are concerned.

supa34

Like some have mentioned selling is alot easier whe. It says freehold. Alot of people are put off from the new estates leasehold issues.

Secondly as mentioned if it's freehold you can do what you want and don't need permission.

If you look at auctions your see alot of leasehold sold. Land that brings in peanuts solf for 1000s.so there must be something they know that we don't.

Also Remember your leaseholder can insist that you use their choice of insurance firm for example which means that £12 can become a few 100

zagubov

Look, by all that's holy, why do you want multiple layers of ownership of your property and how can it possibly advantage you?

Discontinue your baroque byzantine overcomplicated system of leasehold ownership of "your" property as quickly as you can so you can join the rest of Great Britain and the entire habitable world (minus Hawaii and Northern Ireland) in just simply owning a home.

You mostly regret things you didn't do. I'll bet, in all the possible futures there might be, you're more likely to be thinking "if only I'd bought the freehold..." than "if only I'd remained a leaseholder". :think:

Sapphire

Does the freehold have to be offered to a leaseholder before it is offered to anyone else? Is that the law in England?

Also, if a lease is sold on to someone else and there is an existing lease agreement (say like for mine, a maisonette, with two in the building), surely a buyer of the lease could not just change the conditions of the lease (legally). The terms in my lease are very specific, e.g. I look after the bottom half of the building, while the top maisonette looks after the top half (an arrangement that has worked well over the years).

jimbog

Sapphire wrote: »

Does the freehold have to be offered to a leaseholder before it is offered to anyone else? Is that the law in England?

Also, if a lease is sold on to someone else and there is an existing lease agreement (say like for mine, a maisonette, with two in the building), surely a buyer of the lease could not just change the conditions of the lease (legally).

Yes it does.

As said previously they could make ridiculous charges for permissions and perceived retrospective infringements.

Put it this way, why would any company spend money on buying the freehold unless they were intending to get as much money from it as they could (the ‘it’ being the leaseholder)

Sapphire

jimbog wrote: »

Yes it does.

As said previously they could make ridiculous charges for permissions and perceived retrospective infringements.

Put it this way, why would any company spend money on buying the freehold unless they were intending to get as much money from it as they could (the ‘it’ being the leaseholder)

Thank you for the response.

But on an old-style lease, for an old-style building especially, surely they could not just legally impose changes to the conditions of a lease? What would be the point of leases if this could happen?

As mentioned, my lease is for a maisonette in a building containing just two maisonettes, and the agreement according to the leases is that each maisonette takes care of its part of the building. There are no common entrances or anything like that, and the bottom maisonette owns the front and back gardens, apart from a patch that belongs to the upstairs maisonette.

united4ever

blimey, wasn't expecting so many to support buying it. Lots of angles I hadn't considered. Makes sense that whoever buys it will want to get more out of me than £12.50 a year and yes, they are selling it so this sale has probably triggered the offer to buy it. Do you know if that price of £1k could go up again if i didnt buy it now and the new leaseholders started taking the Mick. But, buy it now seems like the sensible move now.