Having checked my lease I have discovered that there are only Sixty One years remaining on my flat in Cramlington. I need to extend my lease but my landlord is absent. What options are available to me?

On the basis that you qualify, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can submit an application to the County Court for an order to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will mean that your lease can be granted an extra 90 years by the magistrate. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to track down the landlord. For most situations an enquiry agent would be helpful to try and locate and to produce an expert document which can be accepted by the court as evidence that the landlord is indeed missing. It is advisable to get professional help from a property lawyer both on proving the landlord’s disappearance and the vesting order request to the County Court covering Cramlington.

I own a leasehold house in Cramlington. Conveyancing and Platform Home Loans Ltd mortgage organised. A letter has just been received from someone claiming to own the freehold. Attached was a ground rent demand for rent dating back to 1995. The conveyancing practitioner in Cramlington who previously acted has now retired.Do I pay?

First contact HMLR to be sure that this person is in fact the new freeholder. It is not necessary to instruct a Cramlington conveyancing practitioner to do this as you can do this on the Land Registry website for £3. You should note that regardless, even if this is the rightful freeholder, under the Limitation Act 1980 no more than 6 years of rent can be collected.

I am tempted by the attractive purchase price for a couple of flats in Cramlington which have approximately 50 years remaining on the leases. Will this present a problem?

There are no two ways about it. A leasehold flat in Cramlington is a wasting asset as a result of the reducing lease term. The nearer the lease gets to zero years unexpired, the more it reduces the salability of the property. The majority of buyers and lenders, leases with less than 75 years become less and less marketable. On a more positive note, leaseholders can extend their leases by serving a Section 42 Notice. One stipulation is that they must have owned the premises for two years (unlike a Section 13 notice for purchasing the freehold, when leaseholders can participate from day one of ownership). When successful, they will have the right to an extension of 90 years to the current term and ground rent is effectively reduced to zero. Before moving forward with a purchase of property with a short lease term remaining you should talk to a solicitor specialising in lease extensions and leasehold enfranchisement. We are are happy to put you in touch with Cramlington conveyancing experts who will explain the options available to you during an initial telephone conversation free of charge. A more straightforward and quicker method of extending would be to contact your landlord directly and sound him out on the prospect of extending the lease You may find he or she is happy to negotiate informally and willing to consider your offer straight off, without having to involve anyone else. This will save you time and money and it could help you reach a lower price on the lease. You need to ensure that any new terms represent good long-term value compared with the standard benefits of the Section 42 Notice and that onerous clauses are not inserted into any redrafting of the lease.

I am employed by a busy estate agent office in Cramlington where we see a few leasehold sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have been given inconsistent advice from local Cramlington conveyancing solicitors. Please can you shed some light as to whether the vendor of a flat can initiate the lease extension process for the buyer?

Provided that the seller has owned the lease 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 wait 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done prior to, or simultaneously with completion of the disposal of the property.

An alternative approach is to extend the lease informally by agreement with the landlord 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 buyer.

Do you have any advice for leasehold conveyancing in Cramlington with the purpose of speeding up the sale process?

• A significant proportion of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Cramlington can be bypassed if you instruct lawyers the minute your agents start marketing the property and request that they start to collate the leasehold information needed by the purchasers’ conveyancers.
• The majority freeholders or Management Companies in Cramlington charge for providing management packs for a leasehold homes. You or your lawyers should discover the actual amount of the charges. The management pack sought on or before finding a buyer, thus accelerating the process. The average time it takes to receive management information is three weeks. It is the most common reason for delay in leasehold conveyancing in Cramlington.

I invested in buying a garden flat in Cramlington, conveyancing having been completed 3 years ago. How much will my lease extension cost? Comparable properties in Cramlington with an extended lease are worth £208,000. The ground rent is £50 yearly. The lease ends on 21st October 2086

With 61 years left to run the likely cost is going to span between £19,000 and £22,000 plus professional fees.

The figure above a general guide to costs for extending a lease, but we are not able to supply the actual costs without more comprehensive due diligence. Do not use the figures in tribunal or court proceedings. There are no doubt additional issues that need to be considered and clearly you want to be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. Neither should you move forward based on this information before getting professional advice.

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Lease Extensions in Cramlington