Leasehold Renew

Or buy the freehold. Any other leaseholders in the property interesting in doing that?

 

Look up leasehold advisory service. They have a calculator which tells you approx what an extension will cost. But they usually add 99 years onto the current remaining term.

Or as bumpkin says if there are other leaseholders interested try and buy the freehold.

 

Wow. What value is the property? Sounds expensive

 

That looks about the going rate. I looked at it several years ago with the maisonette my sister was living in. The cost is a percentage of the increase in value of the property by extending the lease. Licence to print money for the freeholder but you are stuck with it. Hope it all goes well for you. Andy

 

I bought the leasehold on my house a couple of years ago, it wasn't particularly expensive ~£5k iirc.., but the leasehold company (Simarc property management) were horrific to deal with - deliberately awkward, obstructive and their admin fees are ridiculous.

have a read of this

https://www.gov.uk/leasehold-property/extending-changing-or-ending-a-lease

 

Do not under any circumstances try to do it yourself, especially if the freeholder is a professional landlord. They and their solicitors will run rings around you as there are a lot of technicalities, tricks and traps in this area of law.

 

There are and I agree solicitors involved will throw obstacles in the way. But if you're clued up it's not a problem. They don't like people having a go themselves. But @Roadtrip if you have the time and inclination by all means have a go yourself. There's a book called The Conveyancing Fraud. Gives a good insight into how piss easy and routine this solicitor stuff is regarding home purchase. My Dad did it himself with his last house move. Saved himself a grand.

 

@Roadtrip - that ^^^ is really bad advice.

For starters, the book MH recommended appears to have been published in 1994 and so is long and probably dangerously out of date. The piece of legislation which covers the procedure you are going to undertake (the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993) had either not come into force yet or it had only just done so when the book was published and so the author will not have considered the last 27 years' worth of case law, developments in best practice and potentially conflicting or amending primary and secondary legislation.




I spent 12 years in the property game between 1997 and 2009, including some freehold management type work, and since then I have been a practising barrister for the past 12 years. Although I don't do long leasehold work anymore so I can't give you any substantive advice, one of my reported cases from the beginning of my career concerned a professional landlord sabotaging a leasehold enfranchisement by dishonest means and then trying to claim their solicitors' costs from the leaseholders (we won, but only after a long and bitter fight). It 's a complex and very technical area of law anyway, made even more treacherous by the fact that many professional landlords are extremely ruthless, rapacious and very clued up.

No matter how "clued up" you are, you won't know what you don't know. So while you may luck out and find yourself dealing with a fair and reasonable freeholder and you get everything spot on, you may well also find yourself up against some of the craftiest and slipperiest people you're ever likely to meet who will take advantage of any possible technical defects in your paperwork. And you will almost certainly have to pay their legal costs too.

So, you can either take my advice or that of some bloke whose dad once successfully undertook an entirely different type of transaction (a purchase rather than a lease extension), most likely involving an entirely different type of property (freehold rather than leasehold). S'up to you.....

 

Ooft, that touched a nerve

Personally @Roadtrip i wouldn’t have the time to read war and peace on it and would pay a professional to do it. No way could I be arsed with it.

But despite what zedders says, it’s not like splitting the atom. If you’ve time and fancy a challenge, crack on yourself. That’s all

 

Solicitors, right??

 

Not touched a nerve as such, It just reminded me of why I generally stay the hell away from threads involving legal issues because no matter what advice I give, there's always some know-all who thinks they know better and I feel obliged to debunk their bad and often reckless advice in case the OP gets themselves into hot water.

I'm not sure how you come to know so much about negotiating and concluding a lease extension (including applying to the FTT or court for a determination) as the procedure Mr Hinge Snr undertook is completely different. The "atom splitting" analogy is apt though, because if the freeholder is awkward and the leaseholder doesn't get everything absolutely spot on, the process is likely to blow up in their face and leave a lot of fallout.

 

@Roadtrip

Have a read of this guidance from the Leasehold Advisory Service: https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/lease-extension-getting-started/

You'll see that it recommends instructing a sol and a surveyor. It's a bit like riding a bike without a helmet - you may well stay on the bike and there's no harm done, but the consequences of making a small mistake are disastrous.

Don't just pick a firm at random as the quality of high st outfits is very hit and miss, so try to get a recommendation if possible. Also, try to use a local firm as they'll know how most of the local professional FH'ers and their sols operate.

 

Ok. I'll stay away from soliciting And you stay away from gas turbine stuff. Deal?

 

While I may be full of hot air, I am not an expert on it, so yeah.

 

Just been through this but from the freeholder side. The solicitor side of things is fairly straightforward and could be done yourself, what is not straightforward is the valuation negotiations. This is a very specialised process and you need to keep up with all the latest court rulings. The two sides valuations starts off miles apart and usually ends up just who blinks first.

 

Again, I have to correct/qualify that. The process is simple if but only if the leaseholder gets every single “i” dotted and “t” crossed on the notice and the freeholder doesn’t play silly buggers.

If I had a quid for every case I take over from a client who tried their hand at DIY lawyering only to come unstuck I’d be riding a gold plated Desmosedici

 

You could both debate ‘Flat rating’........some common ground there!

I’ll get my coat..