DIY change ground rent to peppercorn

fabs35

Hi

I am planning on selling four flats (converted from one building), each as leasehold plus share of freehold. When we had the leases drawn up, we included ground rent charges, however the estate agent that is marketing the properties has said that this is affecting the marketability of them. I would like to reduce the ground rents to peppercorn rents and wanted to ask whether I could submit the deed of variations to Land Registry myself or whether I need to use a solicitor.

@ Land Registry - how long is the application likely to take (based on current lead times).

Thank you

user1977

If the leases are already registered - who are the leaseholders and freeholder? If you control both entities you should be able to do this as part of the sale, I don't see a particular need to actually do the variation now. Just tell buyers they'll be buying it with peppercorn rent.

fabs35

My wife and I are current both - I am leaseholder on two, she is leaseholder on the other two. We are both freeholders on all four. If we do it at the point of sale, I assume we would pay additional legal fees at that point. I thought it would be better to do it myself now so that it is sorted by the time we find buyers and go through the conveyancing process.

propertyrental

Not sure why the ground rent would be puting off buyers.

If the leaseholders will also between them own the freehold, they'd be effectively paying themselves....

fabs35

Apparently monetary ground rents are not allowed any more and are being phased out. At the moment, the leaseholders are the freeholders but once the flats sell, it will be a different leaseholder in each flat and they will own the freehold between them. The value of the ground rent is 0.1% of the value of the respective flats at the time that the leases were drawn up.