I wish to rent out my leasehold flat in Northumberland Heath. Conveyancing solicitor who did the purchase is retired - so can't ask him. Is permission from the freeholder required?

Notwithstanding that your last Northumberland Heath conveyancing solicitor is no longer available you can review your lease to check if it allows you to sublet the premises. The rule is that if the lease is silent, subletting is allowed. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you must obtain permission from your landlord or some other party in advance of subletting. This means that you cannot sublet without first obtaining consent. Such consent should not be unreasonably turned down. If your lease prohibits you from subletting the property you should ask your landlord for their consent.

I only have 72 years left on my lease in Northumberland Heath. I now want to get lease extension but my freeholder is absent. What are my options?

If 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 enable the lease to be extended by the magistrate. However, you will be required to demonstrate that you have used your best endeavours to locate the freeholder. On the whole a specialist would be useful to conduct investigations and to produce an expert document which can be used as proof that the freeholder can not be located. It is wise to seek advice from a property lawyer in relation to proving the landlord’s absence and the application to the County Court covering Northumberland Heath.

Last month I purchased a leasehold house in Northumberland Heath. Do I have any liability for service charges relating to a period prior to completion of my purchase?

In a situation 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 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 a negotiator for a busy estate agent office in Northumberland Heath where we have witnessed a number of flat sales put at risk as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have been given inconsistent advice from local Northumberland Heath conveyancing solicitors. Please can you confirm whether the seller of a flat can initiate the lease extension formalities for the buyer?

Provided that the seller has owned the lease for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to kick-start the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. This means 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 has to be done prior to, or at the same time as completion of the sale.

An alternative approach is to extend the lease informally by agreement with the landlord 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.

If all goes to plan we aim to complete the disposal of our £125000 flat in Northumberland Heath next Friday . The managing agents has quoted £408 for Certificate of Compliance, insurance certificate and previous years service charge statements. Is it legal for a freeholder to charge exorbitant fees for a flat conveyance in Northumberland Heath?

Northumberland Heath conveyancing on leasehold maisonettes nine out of ten times involves fees being levied by management companies :

• Answering pre-contract enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Northumberland Heath
• Supplying insurance information
• 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 Northumberland Heath leasehold premises is £350. For Northumberland Heath 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.

After years of negotiations we simply can't agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Northumberland Heath. Does the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal have jurisdiction to calculate the appropriate figures?

Where there is a missing freeholder or where there is disagreement about what the lease extension should cost, under the relevant statutes it is possible to make an application to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) to make a decision on the price payable.

An example of a Lease Extension decision for a Northumberland Heath flat is Various @ Colombus Square in January 2012. the Tribunal calculated the premiums to be paid for new leases for each of the flats in Mariners Walk to be £3822 and the premium to be paid for the new lease of 2 Knights Court to be £4439. This case was in relation to 13 flats. The the number of years remaining on the existing lease(s) was 76 years.