Having checked my lease I have discovered that there are only Sixty One years remaining on my flat in Bushey. I now want to get lease extension but my landlord is absent. What options are available to me?

If you meet the appropriate requirements, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the County Court for for permission to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will mean that your lease can be granted an extra 90 years by the Court. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you have used your best endeavours to locate the landlord. In some cases a specialist may be useful to carry out a search and to produce a report which can be used as evidence that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is advisable to get professional help from a property lawyer in relation to proving the landlord’s disappearance and the application to the County Court covering Bushey.

I am attracted to a couple of maisonettes in Bushey which have about forty five years left on the lease term. Do I need to be concerned?

A lease is a right to use the property for a prescribed time frame. As the lease shortens the value of the lease decreases and it becomes more expensive to acquire a lease extension. For this reason it is often a good idea to extend the lease term. More often than not it is difficulties arise selling premises with a short lease as mortgage companies may be unwilling to lend money on such properties. Lease enfranchisement can be a difficult process. We recommend you seek professional help from a solicitor and surveyor with experience in this field

I work for a long established estate agency in Bushey where we have witnessed a number of flat sales put at risk due to short leases. I have been given conflicting advice from local Bushey conveyancing firms. Could you clarify whether the owner of a flat can initiate the lease extension formalities for the purchaser on completion of the sale?

Provided that the seller has been the owner for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to start the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. The benefit of this is that the buyer need not have to sit tight for 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done before, or simultaneously with completion of the disposal of the property.

Alternatively, it may be possible to agree the lease extension with the freeholder either before or after the sale. If you are informally negotiating there are no rules and so you cannot insist on the landlord agreeing to grant an extension or transferring the benefit of an agreement to the purchaser.

Can you provide any top tips for leasehold conveyancing in Bushey with the intention of saving time on the sale process?

• A significant proportion of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Bushey can be bypassed where you appoint lawyers as soon as your agents start advertising the property and request that they start to put together the leasehold information needed by the buyers representatives.
• The majority freeholders or Management Companies in Bushey charge for providing management packs for a leasehold property. You or your lawyers should discover the actual amount of the charges. The management pack sought on or before finding a buyer, thus reducing delays. The average time it takes to obtain the necessary information is three weeks. It is the most frequent cause of frustration in leasehold conveyancing in Bushey.

Completion in due on the disposal of our £150000 apartment in Bushey next week. The landlords agents has quoted £420 for Landlord’s certificate, insurance certificate and previous years statements of service charge. Is the landlord entitled to charge an administration fee for a leasehold conveyance in Bushey?

Bushey conveyancing on leasehold maisonettes usually involves the purchaser’s conveyancer sending questions for the landlord to address. Although the landlord is not legally bound to respond to such questions most will be willing to do so. They may levy a reasonable administration fee for responding to enquiries or supplying documentation. There is no set fee. The average costs for the information that you are referring to is over three hundred pounds, in some situations it is above £800. The administration charge invoiced by the landlord must be sent together with a summary of rights and obligations in relation to administration fees, without which the invoice is not strictly payable. In reality one has little choice but to pay whatever is requested of you if you want to exchange contracts with the buyer.

Having spent months of correspondence we are unable to agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Bushey. Does the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal have jurisdiction to calculate the appropriate figures?

Where there is a missing landlord or if there is disagreement about what the lease extension should cost, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 it is possible to make an application to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal to arrive at the amount due.

An example of a Lease Extension matter before the tribunal for a Bushey property is 197 Byron Road in March 2013. In relation to the value of the extended lease the tribunal concluded that the appropriate premium should be £19237 This case affected 1 flat. The unexpired term was 70.92 years.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in Bushey