Ongoing rent charge after sisters death on Help to Buy Property

scuffy

Sadly my sister passed away suddenly and I am dealing with her estate.  She had a Help to Buy property with a mortgage.  On completion of the sale of the property I have noticed that the Housing agent has charged for rent whilst Probate (which took 24 weeks) and the sale went through, which amounts to 14 months.  During this time the property cannot be rented nor could I take on the mortgage.  I cannot find anything in any signed contracts that says her estate is liable for the rent and whilst the mortgage was frozen and redemption fees waived I feel that my sister is being charged posthumously for the rent.  Other debts that need paying I can understand as they were during her life but this seems somewhat harsh.

Any advice or experiment would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance

AdrianC

Of course her estate is liable, up until the point the property is transferred (as a bequest or via sale) to somebody else... then they become liable.

Why wouldn't it be?

It's very generous of others to freeze repayments, but there's certainly no obligation to.

Probate took 24 weeks - about five months - but the sale then took nine months?

scuffy

I did take some time before applying for Probate for grieving and stuff like that, approximately two months.  Probate took 6 months due to their errors and then the Housing Agent had priority on the sale of the house for the first eight weeks.  Luckily it was sold quickly but the Agent then dragged their feet by not responding to requests or taking any action to push the sale through adding four months to the process and four months rent to my bill.
Usually I think you’ll find mortgage companies will waiver redemption payments due to bereavement.
There is no option to transfer this property to anyone else, it has to be sold.

GDB2222

When you talk about Housing Agent, do you mean Housing Association?

Was this a shared ownership property?

scuffy

Yes, it’s shared ownership 

GDB2222

The estate does, as others have said, need to pay the rent and service charges until the property is sold, unfortunately.

 I take it that the estate was not insolvent?

scuffy

I see where you are coming from but I can’t find any legal documents to support this other than a case highlighted where a lady ended up with a bill for £25,000 for a similar situation. 
The mortgage company haven’t charged anymore and don’t charge the redemption fee but it seems that this scheme prevents you from taking the mortgage or house on, renting it out during this change over period or marketing at a higher price to achieve the market value.  This was also not explained during the purchasing process at which point we could have insured against this.  

I know people think, ‘well that’s life’ but when your deceased sisters legacy is being used to pay rent on property you can do anything with it leaves a bitter taste.

user1977

scuffy said:

I see where you are coming from but I can’t find any legal documents to support this 

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but there doesn't need to be anything specific in the lease spelling that out, in the same way that there doesn't need to be anything on her electricity account - it's the same principle as the estate being liable for all of the deceased's other ongoing bills. Whatever restrictions there are in selling the property are the same which would apply if she was still alive.

eddddy

scuffy said:

I see where you are coming from but I can’t find any legal documents to support this other than a case highlighted where a lady ended up with a bill for £25,000 for a similar situation. 
The mortgage company haven’t charged anymore and don’t charge the redemption fee but it seems that this scheme prevents you from taking the mortgage or house on, renting it out during this change over period or marketing at a higher price to achieve the market value.  This was also not explained during the purchasing process at which point we could have insured against this.  

I know people think, ‘well that’s life’ but when your deceased sisters legacy is being used to pay rent on property you can do anything with it leaves a bitter taste.

The legal document is the lease. The lease will state that the leaseholder must pay the service charge and rent.


Unfortunately, the legal position would be like this...

Hopefully, your sister read the lease before she bought it. Therefore she she should have realised that the service charge and ground rent would be payable from her estate following her death until the property is transferred. If she wasn't happy with that, she shouldn't have bought the lease.


But perhaps you feel that this is such an important issue that your sister's solicitor should have explicitly brought this to your sister's attention. In that case, the executors could make a claim against the solicitor for negligence. (But I think it's extremely unlikely that you would win that claim in court.)

GDB2222

scuffy said:

I see where you are coming from but I can’t find any legal documents to support this other than a case highlighted where a lady ended up with a bill for £25,000 for a similar situation. 
The mortgage company haven’t charged anymore and don’t charge the redemption fee but it seems that this scheme prevents you from taking the mortgage or house on, renting it out during this change over period or marketing at a higher price to achieve the market value.  This was also not explained during the purchasing process at which point we could have insured against this.  

I know people think, ‘well that’s life’ but when your deceased sisters legacy is being used to pay rent on property you can do anything with it leaves a bitter taste.

You did ask for advice. You have had that. Sympathy, I’m sorry to say, is in short supply on this forum.

Julz94

Im
sorry I can’t provide any advice however I  want to say
I’m sorry for your loss and hope things get better for you