Lease Extension

sg151

To give you a bit of history, We own a leasehold flat for over 10 years. We have been trying to get the lease extended and made numerous attempt in the past (over 3-4 years) to agree informallty with the freeholder. But Freeholder kept delaying and never show his agreement to proceed the lease extension informally. In the end we chose the formal route of serving him Section 42 notice, which proved to be an invalid notice due to my solicitor not mentioning premium on the notice. He then sent another one. But suddenly freeholder responded directly to me through WhatsApp saying both of our previous notices are invalid and it is costing him lot of money, and he then proposes to settle this informally asking certain amount of money for the premium and his solicitors' fees.

My questions are...

1] If there are any errors in the Section 42 notice, is the freeholder's solicitors required to confirm that in writing to my solictor or they can simply not bother responding.

2] Can you please confirm what is the minimum mandatory requirements to fulfil Section 42 notice.

3] Can my solicitor sign the Section 42 notice on our behalf without any power of attorney granted to him?

4] If freeholder upon receiving invalid notice, chose to block us re-applying for 12 months, will he need to write to us confirming that, or they can do so without informing us?

Please advise. Many thanks in advance for your response.


Best regards,

Tom99

1) Surely you will want to know as soon as possible that your notice is invalid?
2) Why not employ a solicitor who is familiar with the process rather than one who has made two errors already? Who knows what further, maybe more important, errors they may make.
3) I think you would need to give your solicitor some sort of POA to sign on your behalf, but why introduce yet another thing the freeholder may quibble about.
4) My understanding is that you need to withdraw a valid notice for the 12mth rule to kick in.

I think the freeholder can charge you their legal costs for dealing with the two invalid notices you have served.