I only have 62 years left on my lease in Aldwych. I now want to get lease extension but my landlord is can not be found. What should I do?

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 done all that could be expected to locate the lessor. For most situations a specialist should be useful to try and locate and to produce a report which can be used as evidence that the freeholder can not be located. 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 Aldwych.

Last month I purchased a leasehold house in Aldwych. Do I have any liability for service charges for periods before 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. 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 employed by a reputable estate agency in Aldwych where we have experienced a few leasehold sales put at risk due to leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received contradictory information from local Aldwych conveyancing solicitors. Please can you shed some light as to whether the vendor of a flat can start the lease extension process for the purchaser on completion of the sale?

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 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 needs to be completed prior to, or simultaneously with completion of the sale.

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 buyer.

Can you provide any advice for leasehold conveyancing in Aldwych with the aim of speeding up the sale process?

• A significant proportion of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Aldwych can be avoided where you get in touch lawyers the minute you market your property and request that they start to put together the leasehold documentation which will be required by the purchasers’ lawyers.
• Many landlords or Management Companies in Aldwych charge for supplying management packs for a leasehold homes. You or your lawyers should enquire as to the actual amount of the charges. The management information can be applied for 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 cause of delay in leasehold conveyancing in Aldwych.
• If you have carried out any alterations to the premises would they have required Landlord’s consent? In particular have you installed wooden flooring? Aldwych leases often stipulate that internal structural alterations or addition of wooden flooring necessitate a licence from the Landlord approving such alterations. Should you dont have the approvals to hand do not contact the landlord without contacting your solicitor first.
• If you have had conflict with your landlord or managing agents it is essential that these are resolved before the property is put on the market. The purchasers and their solicitors will be warry about purchasing a flat where a dispute is unsettled. You may need to swallow your pride and discharge any arrears of service charge or resolve 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 details of the dispute to the buyers, but it is clearly preferable to reveal the dispute as historic as opposed to unsettled.
• If you have the benefit of shareholding in the freehold, you should make sure that you have the original share certificate. Arranging a re-issued share certificate is often a time consuming process and delays many a Aldwych home move. Where a reissued share is necessary, do contact the company director and secretary or managing agents (if relevant) for this as soon as possible.

All being well we will complete the disposal of our £ 200000 garden flat in Aldwych in just under a week. The managing agents has quoted £<Macro 'feeRangeWithVAT'> for Certificate of Compliance, insurance certificate and previous years statements of service charge. Is it legal for a freeholder to charge such fees for a leasehold conveyance in Aldwych?

Aldwych conveyancing on leasehold maisonettes usually necessitates the buyer’s lawyer submitting enquiries for the landlord to address. Although the landlord is not legally bound to answer these enquiries most will be willing to do so. They may levy a reasonable administration fee for responding to questions or supplying documentation. There is no upper cap for such fees. The average fee for the information that you are referring to is over three hundred pounds, in some cases it is above £800. The administration charge demanded by the landlord must be sent together with a summary of rights and obligations in relation to administration fees, otherwise the invoice is technically not due. In reality one has no option but to pay whatever is demanded if you want to exchange contracts with the buyer.

Having spent months of dialogue we simply can't agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Aldwych. Can we issue an application to the Residential Property Tribunal Service?

if there is a missing landlord or where there is disagreement about the premium for a lease extension, under the relevant legislation you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) to calculate the sum to be paid.

An example of a Freehold Enfranchisement matter before the tribunal for a Aldwych property is 20 Avonwick Road in July 2013. The Tribunal was dealing with an application under Section 26 of the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 for a determination of the freehold value of the property. It was concluded that the price to be paid was Fifteen Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy (£15,970) divided as to £8,200 for Flat 20 and £7,770 for Flat 20A This case related to 1 flat. The unexpired term was 73.26 years.

I invested in buying a studio flat in Aldwych, conveyancing was carried out half a dozen years ago. Can you work out an approximate cost of a lease extension? Similar properties in Aldwych with over 90 years remaining are worth £255,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £45 charged once a year. The lease ends on 21st October 2098

With only 72 years unexpired we estimate the premium for your lease extension to be between £13,300 and £15,400 plus plus your own and the landlord's "reasonable" professional fees.

The suggested premium range that we have given is a general guide to costs for renewing a lease, but we are not able to advice on the actual costs in the absence of comprehensive due diligence. You should not use the figures in tribunal or court proceedings. There may be other issues that need to be considered and you obviously should be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. You should not move forward based on this information without first getting professional advice.