I only have Fifty years left on my lease in Newham. I now want to extend my lease but my landlord is can not be found. What options are available to me?

If 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 an order to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will mean that your lease can be extended by the Court. However, you will be required to prove that you have used your best endeavours to track down the landlord. On the whole a specialist may be helpful to try and locate and prepare a report which can be accepted by the court as proof that the landlord can not be located. It is advisable to get professional help from a solicitor both on devolving into the landlord’s absence and the application to the County Court overseeing Newham.

I am employed by a reputable estate agent office in Newham where we see a few flat sales put at risk as a result of short leases. I have received inconsistent advice from local Newham conveyancing firms. Please can you shed some light as to whether the owner of a flat can instigate the lease extension process for the buyer?

As long as the seller has been the owner 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. This means that the proposed purchaser need not have to wait 2 years for a lease extension. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done before, 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 purchaser.

Can you provide any top tips for leasehold conveyancing in Newham with the purpose of saving time on the sale process?

• A significant proportion of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Newham can be avoided if you appoint lawyers as soon as your agents start advertising the property and ask them to put together the leasehold information which will be required by the purchasers’ representatives.
• If you have carried out any alterations to the premises would they have required Landlord’s permission? In particular have you installed wooden flooring? Newham leases often stipulate that internal structural changes or installing wooden flooring require a licence issued by the Landlord approving such works. If you fail to have the paperwork in place you should not contact the landlord without contacting your solicitor before hand.

A minority of Newham leases require Landlord’s consent to the sale and approval of the buyers. If this applies to your lease, it would be prudent to notify your estate agents to make sure that the purchasers obtain bank and professional references. The bank reference should make it clear that the buyer is able to meet the yearly service charge and the actual amount of the service charge should be quoted in the bank’s letter. You will therefore need to provide your estate agents with the service charge figures so that they can pass this information on to the buyers or their solicitors.

If you have had conflict with your freeholder or managing agents it is essential that these are resolved before the property is put on the market. The buyers and their solicitors will be reluctant to purchase a flat where there is a current dispute. You will have to accept that you will have to pay any arrears of service charge or resolve the dispute prior to the buyers completing the purchase. It is therefore preferable to have any dispute settled prior to the contract papers being issued to the buyers’ solicitors. You will still have to reveal particulars of the dispute to the buyers, but it is clearly preferable to present the dispute as over rather than unsettled.

You believe that you know the number of years left on your lease but you should double-check by asking your solicitors. A buyer’s lawyer will be unlikely to recommend their client to proceed with the purchase of a leasehold property the remaining number of years is less than 80 years. It is therefore essential at an early stage that you identify whether the lease requires a lease extension. If it does, contact your solicitors before you put your property on the market for sale.

We expect to complete the disposal of our £125000 maisonette in Newham next week. The management company has quoted £324 for Certificate of Compliance, insurance certificate and previous years service charge statements. Is the landlord entitled to charge such fees for a flat conveyance in Newham?

For most leasehold sales in Newham conveyancing will involve, questions about the management of a building inevitably needing to be answered directly by the freeholder or its agent, this includes :

• Completing conveyancing due diligence questions
• Where consent is required before sale in Newham
• 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 Newham leasehold property is £350. For Newham 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.

After years of dialogue we are unable to agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Newham. Can we issue an application to the Residential Property Tribunal Service?

Most definitely. We can put you in touch with a Newham conveyancing firm who can help.

An example of a Lease Extension matter before the tribunal for a Newham residence is 46 Credon Road in January 2014. On 11 September 2013 Deputy District Judge Price sitting at the Bow County Court made a vesting order that the freeholder surrender his lease and be granted a new lease of the Premises on such terms as may be determined by the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).The appropriate sum as concluded by the Tribunal was £7225 This case affected 1 flat. The the unexpired residue of the current lease was 69.77 years.

What makes a Newham lease unmortgageable?

There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Newham. Most leases is drafted differently and legal mistakes in the legal wording can sometimes mean that certain sections are missing. The following missing provisions could result in a defective lease:

• A provision to repair to or maintain elements of the property
• A duty to insure the building
• Clauses dealing with recovering service charges for expenditure on the building or common parts.
• Maintenance charge proportions which don’t add up to the correct percentage

You will 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. Birmingham Midshires, Leeds Building Society, and Platform Home Loans Ltd all have very detailed requirements when it comes to what is expected in a lease. If a mortgage lender believes that the lease is defective they may refuse to grant the mortgage, forcing the purchaser to pull out.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in Newham