My wife and I may need to rent out our Aperfield ground floor flat temporarily due to a career opportunity. We used a Aperfield conveyancing firm in 2003 but they have since shut and we did not have the foresight to get any advice as to whether the lease allows us to sublet. How do we find out?

Even though your last Aperfield conveyancing lawyer is not available you can review your lease to check if you are permitted to let out the apartment. The accepted inference is that if the lease is silent, subletting is permitted. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you must seek consent from your landlord or other appropriate person before subletting. This means that you cannot sublet in the absence of prior permission. Such consent is not allowed to be unreasonably withheld. If your lease does not allow you to sublet you should ask your landlord for their consent.

I only have Sixty One years left on my flat in Aperfield. I need to get lease extension but my freeholder is absent. What are my options?

On the basis that 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 extended by the Court. However, you will be required to prove that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to find the freeholder. In some cases an enquiry agent should be useful to carry out a search and prepare an expert document which can be accepted by the court as evidence that the freeholder can not be located. It is advisable to get professional help from a conveyancer in relation to proving the landlord’s absence and the vesting order request to the County Court overseeing Aperfield.

My wife and I purchased a leasehold flat in Aperfield. Conveyancing and Barclays mortgage went though with no issue. I have received a letter from someone claiming to own the freehold. It included a ground rent demand for rent dating back to 1993. The conveyancing practitioner in Aperfield who previously acted has long since retired.What should I do?

The first thing you should do is make enquiries of HMLR to be sure that the individual claiming to own the freehold is indeed the new freeholder. There is no need to instruct a Aperfield conveyancing firm to do this as you can do this on the Land Registry website for £3. Rest assured that in any event, even if this is the rightful freeholder, under the Limitation Act 1980 no more than 6 years of rent can be collected.

I am tempted by the attractive purchase price for a couple of maisonettes in Aperfield which have in the region of 50 years unexpired on the lease term. Should I regard a short lease as a deal breaker?

There are no two ways about it. A leasehold flat in Aperfield is a wasting asset as a result of the reducing lease term. The closer the lease gets to zero years unexpired, the more it adversely affects the salability of the property. The majority of buyers and banks, leases with less than eighty years become less and less marketable. On a more upbeat 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 Aperfield conveyancing experts who will explain the options available to you during an initial telephone conversation free of charge. More often than not it is possible to negotiate informally with the freeholder to extend the lease You may find he or she is happy to negotiate informally and willing to consider your offer straight off, without having to involve anyone else. This will save you time and money and it could help you reach a lower price on the lease. You need to ensure that any new 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.

Completion in due on our sale of a £375000 garden flat in Aperfield in just under a week. The management company has quoted £300 for Certificate of Compliance, building insurance schedule and previous years statements of service charge. Is the landlord entitled to charge exorbitant fees for a flat conveyance in Aperfield?

For most leasehold sales in Aperfield conveyancing will involve, queries regarding the management of a building inevitably needing to be answered directly by the freeholder or its agent, this includes :

• Answering pre-contract enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Aperfield
• 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 Aperfield leasehold premises is £350. For Aperfield 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 answers.

I own a second floor flat in Aperfield. Given that I can not reach agreement with the freeholder, can the Leasehold valuation Tribunal make a decision on the amount due for a lease extension?

in cases where there is a absentee freeholder or if there is disagreement about what the lease extension should cost, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal to judgment on the premium.

An example of a Lease Extension case for a Aperfield flat is 1 Southlands Court Southlands Road in September 2013. The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal determined that the premium to be paid by the tenant on the grant of a new lease, in accordance with section 56 and Schedule 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 was £30,541 This case was in relation to 1 flat. The unexpired lease term was 50.57 years.