Frank (my husband) and I may need to let out our Southfields 1st floor flat temporarily due to taking a sabbatical. We used a Southfields conveyancing firm in 2004 but they have since shut and we did not have the foresight to seek any advice as to whether the lease allows us to sublet. How do we find out?

Notwithstanding that your last Southfields conveyancing lawyer is not available you can review your lease to check if it allows you to sublet the premises. The accepted inference is that if the lease is non-specific, subletting is allowed. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you need to seek permission from your landlord or some other party in advance of subletting. The net result is that you cannot sublet in the absence of first obtaining consent. Such consent is not allowed to be unreasonably withheld. If your lease does not allow you to sublet you will need to ask your landlord if they are willing to waive this restriction.

I've recently bought a leasehold house in Southfields. Am I liable to pay service charges relating to a period prior to my ownership?

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. 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).

I am a negotiator for a reputable estate agent office in Southfields where we have witnessed a few leasehold sales derailed due to leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received contradictory information from local Southfields conveyancing solicitors. Could you shed some light as to whether the seller of a flat can instigate the lease extension formalities for the buyer?

Provided that the seller has been the owner 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. The benefit of this is that the buyer need not have to wait 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.

All being well we will complete the disposal of our £ 450000 flat in Southfields in just under a week. The landlords agents has quoted £<Macro 'feeRangeWithVAT'> for Certificate of Compliance, building insurance schedule and 3 years statements of service charge. Is the landlord entitled to charge an administration fee for a leasehold conveyance in Southfields?

For most leasehold sales in Southfields 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 questions
• Where consent is required before sale in Southfields
• Supplying insurance information
• 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 Southfields leasehold premises is £350. For Southfields 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 supply answers.

Following years of correspondence we simply can't agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Southfields. Can we issue an application to the Residential Property Tribunal Service?

Most certainly. We are happy to put you in touch with a Southfields conveyancing firm who can help.

An example of a Lease Extension matter before the tribunal for a Southfields property is 83 Balvernie Grove in February 2012. The Tribunal assessed the price to be paid by the leaseholder to the freeholder for the lease extension pursuant to section 48 of the Leasehold Reform Housing & Urban Development Act 1993 should be£16,603.00 This case was in relation to 1 flat. The the unexpired term as at the valuation date was 69.32 years.

What makes a Southfields lease unacceptable for security purposes?

There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Southfields. All leases are unique and legal mistakes in the legal wording can sometimes mean that certain provisions are not included. For example, if your lease is missing any of the following, it could be defective:

• Repairing obligations to or maintain elements of the building
• A duty to insure the building
• Clauses dealing with recovering service charges for expenditure on the building or common parts.
• Service charge per centages that don't add up correctly leaving a shortfall

You could encounter a problem when selling your property if you have a defective lease primarily because it impacts on the ability to obtain a mortgage on the property. Yorkshire Building Society, Virgin Money, and Nottingham Building Society all have express requirements when it comes to what is expected in a lease. Where a lender has been advised by their lawyers that the lease is defective they may refuse to grant the mortgage, obliging the purchaser to pull out.

Southfields Conveyancing for Leasehold Flats - A selection of Questions you should ask Prior to buying

Is anyone aware of any major works anticipated that could add a premium to the service fees? Most Southfields leasehold flats will be liable to pay a service bill for the upkeep of the block set on behalf of the landlord. If you buy the flat you will have to meet this amount, normally in instalments accross the year. This may vary from two or three hundred pounds to thousands of pounds for blocks with lifts and large common areas. In all likelihood there will be a ground rent for you to pay yearly, this is usually not a large amount, say approximately £25-£75 but you should to enquire it because sometimes it can be many hundreds of pounds.