Buying a freehold

webjaved

oxfordowl1 wrote: »

Hi webjaved, I'm in a similar position to you, with just over 900 years left on a 999 years lease at £4 ground rent a year. The freeholder of my house offered me the freehold for about £900 (including their costs). I may be wrong, but in such a long lease I don't think there is a way of forcing the freeholder to sell to you for the £54 figure in your post.

Did you go ahead and purchase the freehold then? You never said what you did in the end.

oxfordowl1

webjaved wrote: »

Did you go ahead and purchase the freehold then? You never said what you did in the end.

Hi webjaved, I'm still trying decide what to do. I have no current intention to move or do any big developments or building work so there doesn't seem to be any rush.

webjaved

oxfordowl1 wrote: »

Hi webjaved, I'm still trying decide what to do. I have no current intention to move or do any big developments or building work so there doesn't seem to be any rush.

Ah right, makes sense. If you do go ahead then let me know how you get on. :money:

webjaved

Hello MSE Community,

I've been trying to find out whether I can buy the freehold for the property link that I supplied at the start of the thread, the vendor of the property has come back to me with this via the estate agents;

I have called them, however there is no freehold available to buy. It may be possible to buy the lease heads (I'm not 100% sure what this entails), which would mean annual ground rent would no longer be charged. However to find out the cost to do this I need to put the request in writing and it would take 3-4 weeks to complete. Alternatively they could ask a solicitor to contact them, I'm not sure if this would speed up the process.

When it mentions "there is no freehold available" that just got me confused. Does buying out the leasehold mean you are the freeholder and own the land the house sits on or does it just mean you have purchased the lease and no longer need to pay ground rent. I'm confused!

davidmcn

At a guess, I think they mean it's a sublease, so you could buy the mid-landlord's interest (which would get rid of any rent and covenants contained in that), but there'd still be a head lease above that (probably of a larger area e.g. the whole street). Really you'd need to see the titles to make sense of it.

webjaved

davidmcn wrote: »

At a guess, I think they mean it's a sublease, so you could buy the mid-landlord's interest (which would get rid of any rent and covenants contained in that), but there'd still be a head lease above that (probably of a larger area e.g. the whole street). Really you'd need to see the titles to make sense of it.

I guess it's a job of a solicitor to find out the details then.

cooltt

webjaved wrote: »

I guess it's a job of a solicitor to find out the details then.

I've been here, it's unlikely you can resolve your query on the forum without all the facts and then the services of a solicitor.

Obtain a copy of the title for your property, it will tell you all you need to know about the leasehold (what type it is, what type YOU have). The Freehold, who owns it, where they reside, what covenants (if any) are in place. Can you buy it.

Then take it all to a solicitor to make sense of it in a way you can understand. It's a complicated area of law so you need to understand what is and isn't available to you and what legal process to follow.

Saying all of that once you know where you stand actually buying the freehold is pretty straight forward for a HOUSE.

Nightmare for a flat.

webjaved

cooltt wrote: »

I've been here, it's unlikely you can resolve your query on the forum without all the facts and then the services of a solicitor.

Obtain a copy of the title for your property, it will tell you all you need to know about the leasehold (what type it is, what type YOU have). The Freehold, who owns it, where they reside, what covenants (if any) are in place. Can you buy it.

Then take it all to a solicitor to make sense of it in a way you can understand. It's a complicated area of law so you need to understand what is and isn't available to you and what legal process to follow.

Saying all of that once you know where you stand actually buying the freehold is pretty straight forward for a HOUSE.

Nightmare for a flat.

I've passed this information on to the estate agents to pass on to the vendors, let's see if they make the enquiry, if not I will have to speak to a solicitor about making the enquiry. Thank you.

G_M

Do a 'map enquiry' here with the Land Registry. Identify all the Titles in the area. You may need to buy several (£3 per Title + £3 per Plan) to identify who owns what land and how (lease vs freeholds).


As David suggested, it may be that the freehold for, say, the entire street is owned by X, while each house (or just your house) has a Head Lease owned by Y, below which is a sub-Lease owned by you.


In that scenario it's unlikely you could buy the freehold (though you might be able to split the freehold for the property off from the existing freehold Title and buy it - if the freeholder agrees), though you could probably buy the Head Lease as suggested.

Tom99

webjaved wrote: »

I've passed this information on to the estate agents to pass on to the vendors, let's see if they make the enquiry, if not I will have to speak to a solicitor about making the enquiry. Thank you.

If you look at the Land Reg records I think you will see that the headlease is owned by Fairhold (Huddersfield) Ltd. Looks like they have a headlease of 126-140 Denton Lane. The freehold does not appear to be registered.
Since the landlord has a headlease covering several properties there would be no easy way for them to sell you the headlease of just the property you are looking at and even if they could you will probably be in almost exactly the same situation with a lease of 900+ yrs.
Nearly all of the nearby houses also appear to be leasehold.
If you are insistent on owning a freehold I would give up on this one as I think you will be wasting your time with any further enquiries, however as said above there is virtually no difference between a 900+yr lease at £3pa and a freehold and you will find that a lot of property in that area is leasehold.