My wife and I may need to sub-let our St Mary Cray ground floor flat temporarily due to a new job. We used a St Mary Cray conveyancing practice in 2004 but they have closed and we did not have the foresight to get any guidance as to whether the lease permits subletting. How do we find out?

Even though your previous St Mary Cray conveyancing solicitor is no longer around you can check your lease to see if you are permitted to let out the apartment. The accepted inference is that if the lease is silent, subletting is allowed. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you must obtain consent from your landlord or some other party in advance of subletting. This means that you cannot sublet without first obtaining consent. The consent should not be unreasonably turned down. If your lease prohibits you from subletting the property you will need to ask your landlord for their consent.

Looking forward to sign contracts shortly on a garden flat in St Mary Cray. Conveyancing solicitors assured me that they report fully on Monday. Are there areas in the report that I should be focusing on?

The report on title for your leasehold conveyancing in St Mary Cray should include some of the following:

• You should receive a copy of the lease

Details of the parties to the lease, for example these could be the leaseholder (you), head lessor, landlord

Will you be prohibited or prevented from having pets in the property?

You should be told what counts as a Nuisance in the lease

Ground rent - how much and when you need to pay, and also know whether this will change in the future

Changes to the flat (alterations and additions)

What the implications are if you breach a clause of your lease? For a comprehensive list of information to be included in your report on your leasehold property in St Mary Cray please enquire of your conveyancer in ahead of your conveyancing in St Mary Cray

I am tempted by the attractive purchase price for a two apartments in St Mary Cray which have approximately forty five years left on the lease term. Should I regard a short lease as a deal breaker?

There are plenty of short leases in St Mary Cray. The lease is a legal document that entitles you to use the premises for a period of time. As the lease gets shorter the value of the lease decreases and it becomes more costly to extend the lease. For this reason it is generally wise to extend the lease term. Sometimes it is difficult to sell a property with a short lease because mortgage lenders may be unwilling to lend money on properties of this type. Lease extension can be a protracted process. We recommend you seek professional assistance from a solicitor and surveyor with experience in this field

Can you offer any advice when it comes to choosing a St Mary Cray conveyancing firm to carry out our lease extension conveyancing?

When appointing a solicitor for lease extension works (regardless if they are a St Mary Cray conveyancing practice) it is most important that he or she should be familiar with the legislation and specialises in this area of work. We suggested that you talk with two or three firms including non St Mary Cray conveyancing practices prior to instructing a firm. If the firm is ALEP accredited then that’s a bonus. Some following of questions could be useful:

• How experienced is the practice with lease extension legislation?

If they are not ALEP accredited then why not?

If all goes to plan we aim to complete the disposal of our £425000 maisonette in St Mary Cray in just under a week. The freeholder has quoted £420 for Landlord’s certificate, building insurance schedule and previous years service charge statements. Is the landlord entitled to charge an administration fee for a flat conveyance in St Mary Cray?

For the majority of leasehold sales in St Mary Cray 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 St Mary Cray
• Supplying insurance information
• Deeds of covenant upon sale
• Registering of the assignment of the change of lessee after a sale

Your conveyancer will have no control over the level of the charges for this information but the average costs for the information for St Mary Cray leasehold premises is £350. For St Mary Cray 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 the information.

I am the proprietor of a ground floor flat in St Mary Cray. Given that I can not reach agreement with the freeholder, can the Leasehold valuation Tribunal determine the amount payable for a lease extension?

in cases where there is a missing landlord or where there is dispute about what the lease extension should cost, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the LVT to make a decision on the sum to be paid.

An example of a Lease Extension case for a St Mary Cray premises 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 affected 1 flat. The the unexpired term as at the valuation date was 50.57 years.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in St Mary Cray