I only have Seventy years left on my lease in Quedgeley. I am keen to extend my lease but my freeholder is missing. What should I do?

On the basis that you qualify, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the County Court for an order to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will enable the lease to be extended by the Court. You will be obliged to prove that you or your lawyers have done all that could be expected to locate the freeholder. In some cases an enquiry agent may be helpful to conduct investigations and to produce a report to be accepted by the court as evidence that the landlord is indeed missing. It is wise to seek advice from a solicitor in relation to proving the landlord’s disappearance and the application to the County Court overseeing Quedgeley.

My wife and I purchased a leasehold flat in Quedgeley. Conveyancing and The Royal Bank of Scotland mortgage are in place. A letter has just been received from someone saying they have taken over the reversionary interest in the property. It included a ground rent demand for rent dating back to 1991. The conveyancing solicitor in Quedgeley who acted for me is not around.What should I do?

First make enquiries of the Land Registry to make sure that the individual purporting to own the freehold is indeed the registered owner of the freehold reversion. You do not need to incur the fees of a Quedgeley conveyancing solicitor to do this as you can do this on the Land Registry website for £3. Rest assured that in any event, even if this is the rightful landlord, under the Limitation Act 1980 the limitation period for recovery of ground rent is six years.

Last month I purchased a leasehold flat in Quedgeley. 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 long established estate agent office in Quedgeley where we have witnessed a number of leasehold sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have been given contradictory information from local Quedgeley conveyancing firms. Please can you shed some light as to whether the owner 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 commence the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. This means that the buyer 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 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 purchaser.

What makes a Quedgeley lease problematic?

There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Quedgeley. Most leases are unique 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:

• Repairing obligations to or maintain elements of the premises
• Insurance obligations
• 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 have difficulties when selling your property if you have a defective lease primarily because it impacts on the ability to obtain a mortgage on the property. Accord Mortgages Ltd, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and Britannia all have very detailed conveyancing instructions when it comes to what is expected in a lease. If a mortgage lender believes that the lease is problematic they may refuse to provide security, forcing the purchaser to withdraw.

Quedgeley Conveyancing for Leasehold Flats - Sample of Queries Prior to buying

Please note that where the lease has no more than eighty years it will impact the value of the flat. It is worth checking with your bank that they are willing to to proceed given the lease term. Leases with fewer than 80 years remaining means that you will most likely have to extend the lease at some point and it is worth discovering how much this would cost. Remember, in most cases you will be required to have owned the premises for 24 months in order to be legally able to extend the lease. The prefered form of lease arrangement is where the freehold interest is in the ownership of the leaseholders. In this scenario the lessees enjoy being in charge if their destiny and although a managing agent is usually employed if the building is larger than a house conversion, the managing agent employed by the leaseholders. On the whole the cost for major works tend not to be built into the service charges, albeit that a few managing agents in Quedgeley obliged leaseholders to contribute towards a reserve fund created for the specific purpose of building a fund for major repairs or maintenance.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in Quedgeley