Is it easy to buy a freehold without assistance?

JReacher1

I’ve been in my house for two years now and looking at buying the freehold. I pay my lease via homeground and they offer a service to enable you to buy the freehold but they seem to charge you £150 for the offer and then £350 for their admin costs. 

Do I need to use them or is the process simple enough I can negotiate with the freeholder directly? 

Don’t see if there is a benefit in paying for homeground to handle the negotiations. 

eddddy

There's no legal reason why you can't contact your freeholder directly and negotiate with them.

But I doubt that your freeholder would agree to that. I imagine the freeholder has hired Homeground to deal with this, because your freeholder doesn't want the hassle of dealing with you (and other leaseholders), when all they might get is £150.


Also, it might be worth hiring your own specialist freehold enfranchisement solicitor to look over the proposed contract and freehold title - to make sure that there are no unnecessary/onerous terms or covenants.


And just to make sure - based on a few other posts in this forum - is the freeholder your immediate landlord? Or is there an intermediate lease (a.k.a. a head lease) that sits in-between you and the freeholder?




Edit to add....

Looking back at your thread title...

JReacher1 said:

Is it easy to buy a freehold without assistance?

Homeground will be working for (assisting) the freeholder - they won't be assisting you.

Any advice they give will be to benefit the freeholder, not to benefit you.

That's why it might be useful to instruct your own specialist freehold enfranchisement solicitor. They will look after your interests, rather than looking after the freeholder's interests.

JReacher1

Cheers very helpful.  I think I will pay the £150!

The freeholder is my immediate landlord