There are only 62 years unexpired on my flat in Brent Park. I now wish to extend my lease but my landlord is missing. What options are available to me?

If you meet the appropriate requirements, 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 mean that your lease can be lengthened by the magistrate. However, you will be required to prove that you or your lawyers have done all that could be expected to find the freeholder. In some cases an enquiry agent would be helpful to conduct investigations and to produce a report to be accepted by the court as evidence that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is advisable to get professional help from a solicitor in relation to proving the landlord’s absence and the vesting order request to the County Court covering Brent Park.

My wife and I purchased a leasehold house in Brent Park. Conveyancing and Bank of Scotland mortgage went though with no issue. I have received a letter from someone claiming to own the freehold. Attached was a demand for arrears of ground rent dating back to 1992. The conveyancing practitioner in Brent Park who previously acted has long since retired.Any advice?

The first thing you should do is make enquiries of the Land Registry to make sure that the individual claiming to own the freehold is in fact the new freeholder. There is no need to instruct a Brent Park conveyancing lawyer to do this as it can be done on-line for £3. You should note that regardless, even if this is the rightful landlord, under the Limitation Act 1980 no more than 6 years of rent can be collected.

I am looking at a couple of flats in Brent Park both have approximately 50 years remaining on the lease term. should I be concerned?

There is no doubt about it. A leasehold apartment in Brent Park is a deteriorating asset as a result of the reducing lease term. The nearer the lease gets to its expiry date, the more it adversely affects the value of the premises. The majority of buyers and lenders, leases with less than 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 a residence 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 Brent Park 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.

Last month I purchased a leasehold house in Brent Park. Do I have any liability for service charges for periods before completion of my purchase?

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 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).

Our conveyancer has advised that he intends to complete and exchange simultaneously on our sale of a £475000 garden flat in Brent Park in six days. The management company has quoted £372 for Landlord’s certificate, insurance certificate and 3 years statements of service charge. Is the landlord entitled to charge an administration fee for a flat conveyance in Brent Park?

For most leasehold sales in Brent Park 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 conveyancing due diligence enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Brent Park
• 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 solicitor will have no control over the level of the charges for this information but the average costs for the information for Brent Park leasehold premises is £350. For Brent Park 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 provide the information.

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

You certainly can. We are happy to put you in touch with a Brent Park conveyancing firm who can help.

An example of a Freehold Enfranchisement case for a Brent Park flat is 7 Craven Park in June 2009. The tribunal considered it unnecessary to value the garage as an independent investment or to value each flat separately, providing that the marriage value calculation uses only the participating flats. Accordingly, the price determined by the Tribunal was £41,140 This case related to 5 flats. The remaining number of years on the lease was 73.14 years.