There are only Sixty One years left on my lease in Kimbolton. I now wish to extend my lease but my landlord is can not be found. What should I do?

If you meet the appropriate requirements, 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 enable the lease to be extended by the Court. However, you will be required to prove that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to locate the landlord. On the whole a specialist may be useful to try and locate and to produce an expert document to be accepted by the court as evidence that the landlord can not be located. It is advisable to get professional help from a conveyancer both on proving the landlord’s disappearance and the vesting order request to the County Court overseeing Kimbolton.

Planning to exchange soon on a garden flat in Kimbolton. Conveyancing lawyers have said that they are sending me a report next week. Are there areas in the report that I should be focusing on?

Your report on title for your leasehold conveyancing in Kimbolton should include some of the following:

• The physical extent of the demise. This will be the apartment itself but could also incorporate a roof space or cellar if applicable.

I've recently bought a leasehold house in Kimbolton. Am I liable to pay service charges for periods before 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 be sure 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 employed by a long established estate agency in Kimbolton where we have witnessed a number of flat sales jeopardised as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have been given contradictory information from local Kimbolton conveyancing solicitors. Please can you clarify whether the owner of a flat can instigate the lease extension formalities for the buyer?

As long as 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. This means that the buyer can avoid having to wait 2 years for a lease extension. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed before, or at the same time as completion of the sale.

Alternatively, it may be possible 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 purchaser.

In relation to leasehold conveyancing in Kimbolton what are the most common lease defects?

Leasehold conveyancing in Kimbolton is not unique. All leases is drafted differently 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 elements of the building
• Insurance obligations
• A provision for the recovery of money spent for the benefit of another party.
• Maintenance charge proportions which don’t add up to the correct percentage

You could encounter difficulties when selling your property if you have a defective lease as they can affect a potential buyer’s ability to obtain a mortgage. Birmingham Midshires, Virgin Money, and Godiva Mortgages Ltd all have express conveyancing instructions when it comes to what is expected in a lease. Where a lender has been advised by their lawyers that the lease is problematic they may refuse to provide security, obliging the purchaser to pull out.

Kimbolton Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Queries Prior to buying

You should be aware if it is no more than 80 years it will impact the marketability of the property. Check with your bank that they are willing to lend given the lease term. A short lease means that you will most likely have to extend the lease at some point and you need to have some idea of how much this will be. For most Kimboltonlease extensions you will need to own the premises for 24 months before you are entitled to extend the lease. Are any of leasehold owners in arrears of their service charge liability? The prefered form of lease arrangement is if the freehold interest is owned by the leaseholders. In this situation the tenants enjoy being in charge if their destiny and even though a managing agent is usually retained where it is larger than a house conversion, the managing agent retained by the leaseholders.

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Lease Extensions in Kimbolton