Deed of Variation - has been ongoing for over 2 years

James19791

I'm concerned with how long its taking my solicitor to carry out a Deed of Varation on my leashold flat.

Some background - I have a leashold flat with ground rent that doubles every 10 years (but stops doubling at year 50).  My home builder was Taylor Wimpey. In 2018 I was sent an offer by the landlord to have a Deed of Variation to change the ground rent payments to be linked to RPI instead of doubling every 10 years.  I had already heard about the 'ground rent scandal ' and difficulties selling these properties because mortgage lenders dislike of orrenous ground rent terms.  I was concerned about being able to sell my flat should I want to. So I took it to a solicitor soon after I recieved the letter.  He was initially concerned about the way the RPI offer was linked back to the month preceeding the start of the lease (that I didnt really understand) and recommended that I had a lease valuation on the current lease vs the RPI offer - which I did (cost £420) through a specialist surveyers and which recommended changing to RPI.  So we go ahead with it.  By now its April 2019 and I signed the paperwork and also pay a fee (through the solicitor) of £120 for the management companys fee.  Since then my solicitor tells me he's negotiating the wording on the Variation and that hes doing several of these together with others (presumably in the same building as me) .  I've had E-mails ignored - I didnt hear anything at all between July and this week when I got a short response that it is still ongoing without any explanation.

Part of me thinks they screwed up/missed deadline and are affraid to tell me.  Part of me thinks if he is trying to get better terms let him get on with it.  I am not thinking of selling at the moment but would like to get it sorted.

On a related note - I'm starting to think about lease extension to reduce ground rent to zero with pepercorn cost if thats possible (my solicitor did mention this possibility but didn't give any costs).

My lease is 150 years from 31/3/2006 so 138 years remaining.  Ground rent: years 0-10 £175, years 10-20 £350, years 20-30 £700, years 30-40 £1400, years 40-50 £2800 and remains £2800 for the rest of the term.  Any ideas what this would cost?  I know theres talk of reform of leasehold law so dont want to pay for lease extension if the law is going to be changed to scrap ground rents in near future.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

penners324

I went through this last year, the freeholder refused to budge on any terms at all. No survey was done either.
Took about 4 months but would have been faster because my solicitor hadn't witnessed my signature properly.

You solicitor sounds incompetent.