Having checked my lease I have discovered that there are only 68 years unexpired on my flat in Crofton Park. I need to extend my lease but my landlord is can not be found. What should I do?

On the basis that 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 mean that your lease can be granted an extra 90 years by the magistrate. You will be obliged to prove that you have used your best endeavours to locate the lessor. For most situations a specialist should be useful to try and locate and prepare an expert document which can be used 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 absence and the application to the County Court overseeing Crofton Park.

I’m about to sell my ground floor flat in Crofton Park.Conveyancing solicitors are to be appointed soon but I have just received a yearly maintenance charge demand – what should I do?

The sensible thing to do is pay the invoice as normal because all ground rent and service charges will be apportioned on completion, so you will be reimbursed by the buyer for the period running from after the completion date to the next payment date. Most management companies will not acknowledge the buyer unless the service charges have been paid and are up to date so it is important for both buyer and seller for the seller to show that they are up to date. Having a clear account will assist your cause and will leave you no worse off financially.

Last month I purchased a leasehold property in Crofton Park. Do I have any liability for service charges relating to a period prior to 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. 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 a negotiator for a long established estate agent office in Crofton Park where we have experienced a number of leasehold sales jeopardised due to short leases. I have been given conflicting advice from local Crofton Park conveyancing solicitors. Can you clarify whether the owner of a flat can start the lease extension formalities 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 proposed purchaser can avoid having to wait 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed before, or simultaneously with completion of the sale.

Alternatively, it may be possible 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.

We expect to complete our sale of a £ 500000 maisonette in Crofton Park next week. The freeholder has quoted £<Macro 'feeRangeWithVAT'> for Landlord’s certificate, insurance certificate and previous years statements of service charge. Is it legal for a freeholder to charge exorbitant fees for a leasehold conveyance in Crofton Park?

For the majority of leasehold sales in Crofton 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 :

• Completing pre-exchange enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Crofton 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 lawyer will have no control over the level of the charges for this information but the average costs for the information for Crofton Park leasehold premises is £350. For Crofton 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 obliged to provide answers.

After months of negotiations we cannot agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Crofton Park. Does the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal have jurisdiction to calculate the appropriate figures?

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

An example of a Lease Extension case for a Crofton Park flat is Flat b 14 Kemble Road in May 2014. The Tribunal assessed the value of the premium payable for the lease extension to be £9,761 This case was in relation to 1 flat.

Crofton Park Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Queries Prior to buying

It is important to be aware whether fixing the lift or some other significant cost is due shortly to be shared amongst the leasehold owners and will dramatically increase the the maintenance charges or necessitate a one off invoice. How many of the leaseholders are in arrears for their service charge payments? The prefered form of lease structure is if the freehold reversion is in the ownership of the leaseholders. In this situation the tenants benefit from being in charge if their destiny and notwithstanding that a managing agent is usually retained where it is bigger than a house conversion, the managing agent retained by the leaseholders.