Harry (my fiance) and I may need to rent out our Hungerford 1st floor flat temporarily due to a new job. We used a Hungerford conveyancing firm in 2004 but they have since shut and we did not have the foresight to seek any guidance as to whether the lease permits subletting. How do we find out?

Notwithstanding that your previous Hungerford conveyancing lawyer is no longer around you can review your lease to check if it allows you to sublet the premises. The accepted inference is that if the lease is non-specific, subletting is allowed. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you are obliged to seek consent from your landlord or some other party before subletting. The net result is you not allowed to sublet in the absence of prior consent. The consent is not allowed to be unreasonably turned down. If your lease prohibits you from subletting the property you should ask your landlord if they are willing to waive this restriction.

I only have Seventy years remaining on my lease in Hungerford. I now wish to extend my lease but my freeholder is missing. 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 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 magistrate. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to find the freeholder. In some cases an enquiry agent would be helpful to conduct investigations and prepare an expert document to be accepted by the court as evidence that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is wise to seek advice from a property lawyer both on proving the landlord’s absence and the application to the County Court overseeing Hungerford.

I am attracted to a couple of apartments in Hungerford both have about 50 years left on the leases. Should I regard a short lease as a deal breaker?

There are no two ways about it. A leasehold flat in Hungerford is a deteriorating asset as a result of the reducing lease term. The closer the lease gets to zero years unexpired, the more it reduces the marketability of the property. The majority of purchasers and banks, leases with under eighty 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 Hungerford 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 They may agree to a smaller lump sum and an increase in the ground rent, but to shorter extension terms in return. You need to ensure that the agreed 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.

We expect to complete the disposal of our £ 275000 garden flat in Hungerford next week. The freeholder has quoted £<Macro 'feeRangeWithVAT'> for Landlord’s certificate, building insurance schedule and 3 years statements of service charge. Is the landlord entitled to charge such fees for a flat conveyance in Hungerford?

Hungerford conveyancing on leasehold maisonettes ordinarily necessitates administration charges invoiced by management companies :

• Completing conveyancing due diligence enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Hungerford
• Supplying insurance information
• 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 Hungerford leasehold property is £350. For Hungerford 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 required to supply the information.

What are the common defects that you come across in leases for Hungerford properties?

There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Hungerford. Most leases are unique and drafting errors can sometimes mean that certain clauses are missing. For example, if your lease is missing any of the following, it could be defective:

• Repairing obligations to or maintain parts of the building
• Insurance obligations
• Clauses dealing with recovering service charges for expenditure on the building or common parts.
• Service charge per centages that don't add up correctly leaving a shortfall

A defective lease will likely cause problems when trying to sell a property primarily because it impacts on the ability to obtain a mortgage on the property. Accord Mortgages Ltd, Virgin Money, and Britannia all have express conveyancing instructions when it comes to what is expected in a lease. If a mortgage lender believes that the lease does not cover certain provisions they may refuse to grant the mortgage, forcing the purchaser to withdraw.

Leasehold Conveyancing in Hungerford - Examples of Queries before buying

Many Hungerford leasehold properties will incur a service bill for maintenance of the block invoiced by the management company. Should you buy the flat you will have to pay this amount, usually periodically throughout the year. This can be anything from two or three hundred pounds to thousands of pounds for large purpose-built blocks. In all likelihood there will be a ground rent for you to pay yearly, normally this is not a exorbitant figure, say around £50-£100 but you need to enquire it because sometimes it could be many hundreds of pounds. What prohibitions are there in the Hungerford Lease?