I have recently realised that I have Fifty years remaining on my lease in Hale Barns. I now wish to extend my lease but my freeholder is can not be found. What should I do?

If you qualify, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the County Court for an order to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will enable the lease to be granted an extra 90 years by the Court. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you have used your best endeavours to track down the landlord. In some cases an enquiry agent would be useful to conduct investigations and prepare a report to be accepted by the court as proof that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is wise to seek advice from a property lawyer both on devolving into the landlord’s disappearance and the vesting order request to the County Court overseeing Hale Barns.

Last month I purchased a leasehold property in Hale Barns. Do I have any liability for service charges relating to a period prior to my ownership?

In a situation where the service charge has already been demanded from the previous lessee and they have not paid you would not usually be personally liable for the arrears. Strange as it may seem, your landlord may still be able to take action to forfeit the lease. It is an essential part of leasehold conveyancing for your conveyancer to ensure to have an up to date clear service charge receipt before completion of your purchase. If you have a mortgage this is likely to be a requirement of your lender.

If you purchase part way through an accounting year you may be liable for charges not yet demanded even if they relate to a period prior to your purchase. In such circumstances your conveyancer would normally arrange for the seller to set aside some money to cover their part of the period (usually called a service charge retention).

I am a negotiator for a long established estate agency in Hale Barns where we see a number of flat sales derailed due to short leases. I have been given conflicting advice from local Hale Barns conveyancing firms. Please can you shed some light as to whether the seller of a flat can commence the lease extension process for the purchaser on completion of the sale?

As long as 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. This means that the proposed purchaser can avoid having 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 advice for leasehold conveyancing in Hale Barns with the purpose of saving time on the sale process?

• Much of the frustration in leasehold conveyancing in Hale Barns can be bypassed where you appoint lawyers as soon as your agents start marketing the property and request that they start to collate the leasehold documentation which will be required by the purchasers’ lawyers.
• Many landlords or Management Companies in Hale Barns charge for providing management packs for a leasehold homes. You or your lawyers should enquire as to the actual amount of the charges. The management information sought as soon as you have a buyer, thus reducing delays. The average time it takes to receive management information is three weeks. It is the most usual reason for frustration in leasehold conveyancing in Hale Barns.
• If there is a history of conflict with your landlord or managing agents it is very important that these are settled prior to the flat being marketed. The purchasers and their solicitors will be reluctant to purchase a flat where there is an ongoing dispute. You will have to accept that you will have to pay any arrears of service charge or settle the dispute prior to the buyers completing the purchase. It is therefore preferable to have any dispute settled ahead of the contract papers being issued to the buyers’ solicitors. You are still duty bound to disclose particulars of the dispute to the purchasers, but it is clearly preferable to present the dispute as historic as opposed to unsettled.
• If you have the benefit of shareholding in the freehold, you should ensure that you hold the original share document. Arranging a duplicate share certificate can be a time consuming process and slows down many a Hale Barns conveyancing transaction. If a new share certificate is required, do contact the company director and secretary or managing agents (if relevant) for this at the earliest opportunity.
• You may think that you are aware of the number of years remaining on your lease but it would be wise to verify this by asking your conveyancers. A purchaser's lawyer will not be happy to advise their client to proceed with the purchase of a leasehold property the lease term is less than 80 years. In the circumstances it is important at an early stage that you identify whether the lease requires a lease extension. If it does, contact your solicitors before you put your property on the market for sale.

If all goes to plan we aim to complete our sale of a £ 275000 flat in Hale Barns on Monday in a week. The management company has quoted £<Macro 'feeRangeWithVAT'> for Landlord’s certificate, insurance certificate and previous years statements of service charge. Is it legal for a freeholder to charge an administration fee for a leasehold conveyance in Hale Barns?

Hale Barns conveyancing on leasehold flats typically results in fees being invoiced by landlords agents :

• Answering pre-exchange enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Hale Barns
• Copies of the building insurance and schedule
• Deeds of covenant upon sale
• Registering of the assignment of the change of lessee after a sale

Your lawyer will have no control over the level of the charges for this information but the average costs for the information for Hale Barns leasehold property is £350. For Hale Barns conveyancing transactions it is customary for the seller to pay for these costs. The landlord or their agents are under no legal obligation to answer such questions most will be willing to do so - albeit often at exorbitant prices where the fees bear little relation to the work involved. Unfortunately there is no law that requires fixed charges for administrative tasks. Neither is there any legal time frame by which they are obliged to provide the information.

I invested in buying a basement flat in Hale Barns, conveyancing having been completed in 2000. Can you let me have an estimated range of the fair premium for a lease extension? Comparable properties in Hale Barns with an extended lease are worth £214,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £45 levied per year. The lease ends on 21st October 2096

With 70 years unexpired we estimate the premium for your lease extension to span between £10,500 and £12,000 as well as professional fees.

The suggested premium range that we have given is a general guide to costs for extending a lease, but we are not able to provide a more accurate figure without more comprehensive investigations. Do not use this information in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There may be additional concerns that need to be taken into account and you obviously should be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. Neither should you move forward based on this information before getting professional advice.