Lease Extension and Solicitors Responsibilities

AskAsk

GB2025 said:

AskAsk said:

they would only deal with extending the lease.  they would not have been instructed or charged for any other work in respect to the lease.

So they wouldn't have looked at the deeds/title documents before extending the lease?

they would have done but they would have looked at the section about the length of the lease and not gone into the other details.  they would not have assumed there was an issue with the lease to start looking into it.  they would only concentrate on the length of it and how to extend it.

lease extension solicitors aren't conveyancers.  they deal with the extension so their expertise is in the extension process and negotiation with the freeholder to get the best price for the extension and to make sure the freeholder doesn't do a fast one by adding in clauses to the new lease during the process for good measure, lol.

it sounds like the issue is not as obvious as had been suggested, because if it was, it would have been picked up when you bought your flat in the first place.

GB2025

Th

user1977 said:

GB2025 said:

AskAsk said:

they would only deal with extending the lease.  they would not have been instructed or charged for any other work in respect to the lease.

So they wouldn't have looked at the deeds/title documents before extending the lease?

Only the parts which were relevant to the job.

You don't get a full medical every time you visit your GP.

That's true but I would have thought the fact that the title deeds does not apparently delineate between the 2 flats would have been relevant to extending a lease.

AskAsk

GB2025 said:

Th

user1977 said:

GB2025 said:

AskAsk said:

they would only deal with extending the lease.  they would not have been instructed or charged for any other work in respect to the lease.

So they wouldn't have looked at the deeds/title documents before extending the lease?

Only the parts which were relevant to the job.

You don't get a full medical every time you visit your GP.

That's true but I would have thought the fact that the title deeds does not apparently delineate between the 2 flats would have been relevant to extending a lease.

when you do a lease extension, there are two solicitors involved.  one for you and one for the freeholder and as you can see, neither has been bothered about the issues, so it obviously has no impact on what they were doing.

you said earlier that the ambiguity of the two flats is to do with covenants in the lease, which would be of no interest to the lease extension process.

eddddy

GB2025 said:

That's true but I would have thought the fact that the title deeds does not apparently delineate between the 2 flats would have been relevant to extending a lease.

Can you explain the problem with the lease in a bit more detail?

For example,

• 1) Is it that there is a party wall separating the 2 flats, and the wording of the lease doesn't specify the exact delineation.   e.g, Does flat 1 own the party wall, or does flat 2 own the party wall, or does each flat own 50% of the thickness of the party wall?

• 2) Or is that there is a clear error in the title plan

• Or something else

i.e. Is it something that needed careful detailed reading of the lease to find it, or something that should have been easily spotted.