Buying the freehold of your property

mattkelly

Myself and partner along with 10 other house owners are currently in the middle of a court case to try and buy the freehold of our houses. In the first court case we had to prove our houses were in fact houses as they are known as cluster houses or back to back houses, which we won! the freeholder then appealed in a second court case and said because we share the roof with other houses ( exactly like terrace houses ) we couldn’t in fact buy the freehold, which he won. With the judge using the example of a flat on top of a shop for the reason for why he ruled the way he did. Which is nothing like our house, as no one lives above us. There are also exactly the same style houses in the same street That have some how bought the freehold. Our group is currently looking to appeal the decision, but people are starting to get worried now because the costs are going through the roof. We have now paid about £4000 each and a total of £44,000 between us, to be told we are in the exact same position that we started in 2 years ago and can only extend our leases at a cost of approximately £17,000, Or we can look at going down the enfranchise route which is Very complicated. We are all very confused how we managed to lose this court case from the example in which the judge gave. This is just another example of an average homeowner trying to buy the freehold and being screwed over by an out of day system. Please can you shed some light or offer any advice moving forward.

soolin

Moved to a more appropriate board for advice. 

AdrianC

mattkelly said:

Myself and partner along with 10 other house owners are currently in the middle of a court case to try and buy the freehold of our houses. In the first court case we had to prove our houses were in fact houses as they are known as cluster houses or back to back houses, which we won! the freeholder then appealed in a second court case and said because we share the roof with other houses ( exactly like terrace houses ) we couldn’t in fact buy the freehold, which he won. With the judge using the example of a flat on top of a shop for the reason for why he ruled the way he did. Which is nothing like our house, as no one lives above us. There are also exactly the same style houses in the same street That have some how bought the freehold. Our group is currently looking to appeal the decision, but people are starting to get worried now because the costs are going through the roof. We have now paid about £4000 each and a total of £44,000 between us, to be told we are in the exact same position that we started in 2 years ago and can only extend our leases at a cost of approximately £17,000, Or we can look at going down the enfranchise route which is Very complicated. We are all very confused how we managed to lose this court case from the example in which the judge gave. This is just another example of an average homeowner trying to buy the freehold and being screwed over by an out of day system. Please can you shed some light or offer any advice moving forward.

This is definitely one for specialist, professional legal advice.

The one thing you've not mentioned is your solicitor... Do you have one? Or are you acting for yourselves? Are they a specialist, or just a generalist?

mattkelly

Hi, thanks for replying. We have been with our solicitors for 2 years now with specialists involved in both court cases. The landlord owns many properties throughout the country and this will affect him massively financially if we were aloud to buy the freehold. He therefore has an infinite amount of funds to fight this. Leaving our group with very few options! This could potentially be a massive problem for thousands of people in this country who believe they can buy there freehold from this landlord.