Having checked my lease I have discovered that there are only 68 years remaining on my lease in Lake. I now wish to extend my lease but my freeholder is missing. What options are available to me?

If 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 enable the lease to be extended by the magistrate. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to track down the lessor. For most situations an enquiry agent would be useful to try and locate and prepare an expert document to be used as evidence that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is wise to seek advice from a solicitor in relation to devolving into the landlord’s disappearance and the application to the County Court overseeing Lake.

My wife and I purchased a leasehold flat in Lake. Conveyancing and Norwich and Peterborough Building Society mortgage organised. A letter has just been received from someone claiming to own the reversionary interest in the property. It included a ground rent demand for rent dating back to 1992. The conveyancing practitioner in Lake who previously acted has long since retired.What should I do?

First contact the Land Registry to make sure that the individual claiming to own the freehold is in fact the registered owner of the freehold reversion. You do not need to incur the fees of a Lake conveyancing firm to do this as you can do this on the Land Registry website for less than a fiver. Rest assured that in any event, even if this is the rightful freeholder, under the Limitation Act 1980 the limitation period for recovery of ground rent is six years.

I've recently bought a leasehold property in Lake. Do I have any liability for service charges relating to a period prior to my ownership?

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. However, your landlord may still be able to take action to forfeit the lease. A critical element 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 Lake where we see a number of flat sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received conflicting advice from local Lake conveyancing solicitors. Could you shed some light as to whether the vendor of a flat can instigate the lease extension process 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 proposed purchaser 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 before, or at the same time as completion of the disposal of the property.

An alternative approach is 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 Lake from the point of view of saving time on the sale process?

• Much of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Lake can be reduced if you get in touch lawyers as soon as you market your property and request that they start to put together the leasehold information needed by the buyers solicitors.
• If you have carried out any alterations to the premises would they have required Landlord’s approval? Have you, for example installed wooden flooring? Most leases in Lake state that internal structural changes or installing wooden flooring calls for a licence issued by the Landlord acquiescing to such works. Should you fail to have the approvals in place you should not contact the landlord without contacting your solicitor before hand.

I invested in buying a leasehold flat in Lake, conveyancing having been completed 2001. Can you work out an approximate cost of a lease extension? Equivalent flats in Lake with over 90 years remaining are worth £248,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £55 invoiced every year. The lease expires on 21st October 2104

With 79 years left to run the likely cost is going to range between £11,400 and £13,200 as well as legals.

The suggested premium range that we have given is a general guide to costs for extending a lease, but we cannot give you a more accurate figure without more detailed due diligence. You should not use this information in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There are no doubt additional concerns 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 Lake