Flying freehold

CRISPIANNE3

All now resolved and we love the house so purchase going ahead.

subjecttocontract

* An estate agent wouldn't necessarily know if a property was a flying freehold.
* Presumably the need for an indemnity policy is due to a small defect relating to the flying freehold......picked up by the solicitor so, even more reason for the EA not to know.
* Indemnity policies are not unusual. One property I bought had three policies. Doesn't usually affect saleability afaik.
* If there is a need for an indemnity policy it probably means the seller didn't know it was partly flying freehold as it wasn't found  when they bought.
* Nothing about the situation exists to stop you making a revised offer.

donutandbeer

CRISPIANNE3 said:

We are concerned if we go ahead with the purchase we may have a problem selling the property in the future..Also what happens if there is an issue and the other party refuses to pay anything towards it or will not allow trades man access to fix it. 

We are not sure whether to pull out now or reduce our offer price to reflect the situation.  Also I am very unhappy  the seller did not make this known about the flying freehold and I assume the EA did not either. 

Any guidance really appreciated.

We are currently buying a mid terraced house with a tiny bit of flying freehold.

I can’t quite understand from your post whether you have a flying freehold (part of your freehold is on top of other people’s freehold) or a creeping freehold (part of you freehold is below other people’s freehold). Either way, indemnity policy is a common “solution” for this.

Most lenders don’t approve mortgage for houses with too much percentage of flying/creeping freehold, I believe normally it needs to be below 9% or something.

You should discuss your worries about the flying/creeping freehold with your solicitor, they will be able to advise whether the indemnity policy is able to cover those issues. 

In our case, we don’t think the flying freehold has a huge impact on the price. Apparently it’s quite a common issue with ex-council houses (this house shares an alleyway with its neighbour and part of the bathroom is on top of the alleyway).

Obviously revise your offer if you want to. We didn’t because we didn’t want to lose the house - very limited stock of this kind of tiny (cheapest) freehold houses come up in our area. We didn’t think we can knock off that much that will actually make a difference, and our vendor is not at all in a rush to sell.