Jane (my partner) and I may need to rent out our Purfleet garden flat for a while due to a new job. We used a Purfleet conveyancing practice in 2002 but they have since shut and we did not have the foresight to get any guidance as to whether the lease prohibits the subletting of the flat. How do we find out?

Notwithstanding that your last Purfleet conveyancing solicitor is no longer around you can review your lease to check if it allows you to sublet the property. The accepted inference is that if the lease is silent, subletting is allowed. There may be a precondition that you must obtain consent via your landlord or some other party before subletting. The net result is you not allowed to sublet in the absence of prior consent. Such consent must not not be unreasonably turned down. If the lease prohibits you from letting out the property you will need to ask your landlord for their consent.

Last month I purchased a leasehold house in Purfleet. Do I have any liability for service charges for periods before my ownership?

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. A critical element 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 work for a reputable estate agent office in Purfleet where we have experienced a number of flat sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have been given contradictory information from local Purfleet conveyancing solicitors. Please can you confirm whether the vendor of a flat can commence 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 commence the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. This means that the proposed purchaser need not have to sit tight for 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed before, or at the same time as completion of the disposal of the property.

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.

Can you provide any advice for leasehold conveyancing in Purfleet from the perspective of speeding up the sale process?

• A significant proportion of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Purfleet can be avoided if you get in touch lawyers the minute you market your property and request that they start to put together the leasehold information which will be required by the buyers lawyers.
• The majority freeholders or managing agents in Purfleet charge for providing management packs for a leasehold premises. You or your lawyers should discover the actual amount of the charges. The management information can be applied for on or before finding a buyer, thus accelerating the process. The typical amount of time it takes to receive management information is three weeks. It is the most usual cause of delay in leasehold conveyancing in Purfleet.

If all goes to plan we aim to complete the disposal of our £175000 maisonette in Purfleet in seven days. The landlords agents has quoted £360 for Landlord’s certificate, insurance certificate and 3 years statements of service charge. Is it legal for a freeholder to charge such fees for a flat conveyance in Purfleet?

Purfleet conveyancing on leasehold flats more often than not requires the buyer’s solicitor submitting questions for the landlord to answer. Although the landlord is not legally bound to respond to these enquiries the majority will be content to assist. They are at liberty charge a reasonable charge for responding to enquiries or supplying documentation. There is no upper cap for such fees. The average costs for the information that you are referring to is over three hundred pounds, in some situations it is above £800. The management information fee required by the landlord must be sent together with a synopsis of entitlements and obligations in relation to administration fees, without which the invoice is not strictly payable. Reality however dictates that one has little choice but to pay whatever is requested of you should you wish to exchange contracts with the buyer.

I am the leaseholder of a ground floor flat in Purfleet. In the absence of agreement between myself and the landlord, can the Leasehold valuation Tribunal determine the premium payable for a lease extension?

in cases where there is a missing freeholder or where there is disagreement about what the lease extension should cost, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 it is possible to make an application to the LVT to determine the sum to be paid.

An example of a Lease Extension decision for a Purfleet 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 related to 13 flats. The unexpired lease term was 76 years.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in Purfleet