Leasehold and Freehold problem

hopeitwill

Hi everyone,

This may have been asked before but I could not find a definitive answer yet. We're buying the house that we're renting from our landlord and 14 weeks into it, still not receiving updates from our solicitor unless our adviser raises a complaint on the conveyancing portal. And we're aware how busy everybody is, we're not contacting them every other day.
The house is registered as leasehold on the land registry website but our landlord says she holds the freehold, she actually bought it from the previous owner. The previous owner did register the house as freehold but our landlord's solicitor back then didn't. This is what I can see on the land registry.

Tenure: Leasehold
Tenure: Freehold
Tenure: Leasehold Is it possible for our solicitor to register it as freehold? I'd assume we'd have to pay extra for that to the solicitors.

davidmcn

Your solicitor can only register it as freehold in your name if whoever owns the freehold transfers it to you. So either the current owner (i.e. the vendor to the landlord) now transfers the title like they should have when your landlord bought, or they transfer it directly to you. I would guess (part of) the delay is because they're trying to track down the previous owner and get them to do this.

AdrianC

The house itself is still leasehold - it just happens that the freehold is owned by the same person as the lease.

Once you own both, you can then cancel the lease if you wish.

hopeitwill

Thanks both for your answers, really appreciated, we're first time buyers so quite inexperienced in this. When we were doing all the paperwork, we wrote down it as Freehold with the caveat that it is registered as leasehold, but as you say this may be causing delays. We probably should have written it down as leasehold which is a mistake on our part.

Land_Registry

You need to clarify which titles/tenures are involved. Your basic search online merely confirms that the address searched is linked to two leasehold tenures and a freehold. 

Your solicitor will hopefully have confirmed which tenures are matched to your purchase and who owns it/them. 

You don’t have enough detail it seems but if your seller owns both the freehold and leasehold you can buy both and/or merge them into a single freehold with no lease. 

However the second leasehold clouds the details. 

AlexMac

Ask your solicitor; every thing is fixable.

Our kids badly wanted a house, 100 miles away, having sold the previous one well, but their solicitor (with her fancy London ways) said walk away as the tenure was really weird; the lease wasn't even on their house; but on the field where the development was built in the early 20th Century.

Turned out this wasn't unusual in that Country area; not everything was on the Land Registry locally, the freeholds were owned by an ancient estate, and the vendor pointed out that it had bought and sold for 100 years without problems,  She suggested they get a local solicitor (who knew the local Island ways!).

Nope, they said. So they (or rather, their fancy London solicitor) sorted it - cost a couple of grand and delayed everything 2 months, but everythnig is possible.  Although by the  end, Daughter in Law was on 1st name terms with the clerk in the ancient estate office, and the contact in the Land Registry..  Persistent girl

So i'ts fixable- in your case probably more easily than theirs (they had to complete on their London sale and move to a short-term holiday let the Country in December for 2 months while it was sorted to get the kids into the new school)  We eventually helped move 'em in in February; bleedddy freezin!  But well worth it- Now? lovely house; happy family

hopeitwill

Thank you so much both. I have serious doubts about my solicitor since he asked for the gifter's documents 10 weeks after the process began but hopefully he can handle this.

greatcrested

hopeitwill said:

. This is what I can see on the land registry.

Tenure: Leasehold
Tenure: Freehold
Tenure: Leasehold Is it possible for our solicitor to register it as freehold? I'd assume we'd have to pay extra for that to the solicitors.

For £3 each, buy download eachof hose Titles from the Land Registry here.

See who owns each one. If your landlord owns them all, then presumably he will be selling them all to you (check the contract when it comes before you sign it!). You could then ask your solicitor to get rid of the lease and you would simply own the proprty freehold.

But if the registered owner of one of the Titles is not your landlord, then he can't sell it to you.

hopeitwill

greatcrested said:

hopeitwill said:

. This is what I can see on the land registry.

Tenure: Leasehold
Tenure: Freehold
Tenure: Leasehold Is it possible for our solicitor to register it as freehold? I'd assume we'd have to pay extra for that to the solicitors.

For £3 each, buy download eachof hose Titles from the Land Registry here.

See who owns each one. If your landlord owns them all, then presumably he will be selling them all to you (check the contract when it comes before you sign it!). You could then ask your solicitor to get rid of the lease and you would simply own the proprty freehold.

But if the registered owner of one of the Titles is not your landlord, then he can't sell it to you.

Thank you greatcrested, I have just done that and just so that I understand it clearly, does it mean that there are 3 different registers for the house at the moment?

One of the leasehold, and the freehold is showing that my landlord (seller) is the registered owner.
But the other leasehold is showing that the previous owner of the house is the registered owner.

Upon reading it completely, there are two leases, one for the house and one for the backyard.

The leasehold for the house is owned by the landlord. (current seller)
The leasehold for the backyard is owned by the previous seller.

The freehold shows the registered owner is the current seller but schedules of notices of leases refer to the two different leases, one for the house, the other for the backyard.

Feels like we put ourselves in a pickle as first-time buyers.

hopeitwill

My question is, if the landlord could go and buy the freehold for the garden from the previous owner of the house, would that take an awful long time?

Land_Registry

More a case of it could rather than will. All depends on finding them and getting them to complete the necessary forms etc 
Once lodged for registration it can be expedited  (2 weeks or less) if all in order