Freeholder offering to buy flat — any opinions?

mixu

We will have been in our flat for two years at the end of March while our leasehold reaches the 80-year mark in May. The freeholder wrote to us last week, unprompted, offering to buy the flat if we were thinking of selling.

Is this a common occurrence? Are they likely to pay market value? Is there more to it than the obvious?

We had been thinking of moving this year and were going to inquire about extending the lease.

The flat is the ground floor of a London terrace — I believe upstairs also received the same letter but we haven't spoke to them about it.

Any ideas, opinion or advice gratefully received!

Thanks

rrwfotr

If the lease expires soon, is the flat worth anything?

This link may help:

http://www.lease-advice.org/

Reading the site it looks like an expensive process and as you may have left it too long the advantage may well be in the freeholders favor...

mixu

We've still got 80 years on the lease and were only thinking of extending as it should be cheaper now than in 5 or 10 years...

rrwfotr

Hmm may be worth giving the lease holders advice agency a call as it may well be in your advantage then to extend as I know from previous experience getting mortgages on flats with less than 70 years on the lease can cause problems for future buyers thus making it hard to sell on.

Doozergirl

Not common really but they may want to do something with the building.

Of course they have to offer you market value, otherwise you just turn down their offer.

It's just like anyone else buying your flat.

If you wanted to extend the lease before it hit 80 years, you should really have agreed a price by now :eek: When we did ours it took nearly six months from our initial enquiry and we did everything as soon as we needed to on our side!

mixu

Thanks, should've said are they likely to offer market value? Of course we'd turn down anything else!

Been meaning to send a letter for weeks but such is life... I guess I'm wondering how easy it will be to extend the lease if they're interested in buying. A question I need to ask them really.

Doozergirl

Ask them why they want the flat as it may be that they could actually pay you more than market value. And get your own valuations. Of course, extending the lease is pointless if you are selling to them.