Owning a flat usually means owning a lease of the property, this is a ‘time-limited’ interest becoming shorter every day. The lease will normally be granted for a set period of time , ordinarily 99 or 125 years, although we have come across longer and shorter terms in Bermondsey. Clearly, the period of lease remaining shortens over time. This may slip by relatively unnoticed when the flat or house has to be sold or re-mortgaged. The shorter the lease the less it is worth and the more it will cost to extend the lease. Eligible leaseholders in Bermondsey have the legal entitlement to extend the lease for an additional ninety years under Leasehold Reform legislation. You should give due deliberation before putting off your Bermondsey lease extension. Holding off that expense now only increases the price you will eventually incur to extend your lease
Leasehold properties in Bermondsey with more than 100 years left on the lease are sometimes referred to as ‘virtual freehold’. This is where the lease is worth the same as a freehold interest in your home. In such circumstances there is often little to be gained by buying the reversionary interest unless savings on ground rent and service charges merit it.
| Lender | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Barnsley Building Society | 60 years from the date of the mortgage application subject to 35 years remaining at the end of the mortgage term. |
| Chelsea Building Society | 85 years from the date of completion of the mortgage. Please ensure that you explain the implications of a short term lease to the borrower. |
| Coventry Building Society | A minimum of 70 years unexpired lease at completion for all scheme types apart from Lifetime Mortgages (Equity Release), which require a minimum unexpired term of 80 years at completion. |
| Skipton Building Society | 85 years from the date of completion of the mortgage For Buy to Let cases: - lettings must not breach any of the lessee’s covenants; and - consent of the lessor to lettings must be obtained if necessary |
| TSB | Minimum of 70 years at mortgage commencement, with 30 years remaining at mortgage redemption. |
Engaging our service will provide you better control over the value of your Bermondsey leasehold, as your property will be more valuable and saleable in respect of lease length should you wish to sell. The conveyancers that we work with have a wealth of experience of handling many hundreds of lease extensions or freehold purchase transactions.
Following protracted negotiations with the freeholder of her one bedroom flat in Bermondsey, Daisy started the lease extension process just as the lease was approaching the crucial eighty-year deadline. The lease extension was finalised in January 2009. The freeholder’s fees were kept to an absolute minimum.
Last Summer we were e-mailed by Ms Ashleigh Morris , who acquired a first floor flat in Bermondsey in August 1999. The question was if we could estimate the premium could be for a 90 year extension to my lease. Similar flats in Bermondsey with a long lease were in the region of £218,400. The mid-range ground rent payable was £60 invoiced quarterly. The lease ended on 9 June 2085. Having 59 years left we approximated the premium to the freeholder for the lease extension to be within £27,600 and £31,800 not including costs.
An example of a Freehold Enfranchisement decision for a Bermondsey flat is 1-41 Royal Tower Lodge 40 Cartwright Street in April 2013. the tribunal adding the agreed value of capitalised ground rents and the reversion the price to be paid for the freehold was £1,187,000 This case affected 41 flats. The unexpired residue of the current lease was 107 years.