My partner and I are going to view a house for sale on the weekend that is likely to be leasehold (was at last date, many of the others in the street likewise). It's a 50s or 60s built property in Bristol and not quite clear why it's leasehold. Has anyone here purchased the freehold on a house? Was it a fairly painless process? From a brief scan about the internet it's tricky to estimate a cost to do it (I've seen £10k as a rough guide) but the freeholder doesn't have to sell it to you at all, which would be a bit crap. It's a murky world so any advice is welcome.
Buy another house. House buying is shit enough without that added complication.
Yeah in our previous house, we brought the free hold to our leasehold house, was painless and straight forward, think it's cost about 1400 quid.
We did it for exactly the reason the poster above is demonstrating, ie owning the freehold prevents people walking away because it's leasehold.
We just asked the leaseholder how much they wanted , then got a solicitor to sort it all out.
£10k sounds too much to me though.
Essentially we would want control and freedom, partially because of the reason Muffin man pointed out. Sounds like it's not too problematic to resolve though.
Depends how long is left. If its a 999 year lease you'll be purchasing, unless it's down to the last 200 or so years it won't make one bit of difference to you.
If its less than that walk away.
Edit: if it's on a 'development' of new builds there may be a ground rent, if there is, it may cause trouble getting a mortgage especially if it has a clause saying it can increase at any point, that would rule a mortgage out completely.
Yes I have done it on a semi detached house on an estate . Mine was a bit of a hostile one buying a freehold from an aristocratic estate that tried to stop me . Luckily the Leashold reform act which gives you the right to buy a freehold if you have lived in a property for over 6 months I believe, and a good solicitor helped a lot and we won.
Value of freehold is roughly calculated as a net present value of ground rents from when your leasehold expires to about 100 years… mine was about 7k . Value depends on size of ground rents.
Some of the new build estate ground rents are complete robbery! They have been sold to unwitting buyers whose solicitors failed to advise of the compounding effect of ground rent rises.
Mine was an old estate with a fixed low “peppercorn” ground rent.
I'd imagine it's the peppercorn corn ground rent. It looks like a few properties have purchased the freehold so there's precedent. No aristocratic types in that particular suburban maze.
Its of two things. Either its land woned by church, or some other estate and its simply a feature of the place, in which case theres not really an issue, and it's largely historical.
Or a newish build, where the developers, simply to make extra cash, didnt include the freehold, in which case, good general advice is to run away.
Fairly painless it was not! Although my first solicitors were inept and wasted actual years doing absolutely nothing, when the decent ones got it done, it still took the best part of a year and it's taken over a year for land registry to do their bit... Still waiting. Plus I had to pay 3 sets of solicitors' fees which was more than the freehold itself. Possibly around 6k all in.
I bought mine recently for £400.
I had about 900 years left on my lease for my 1910 house. The lease was only £2.50 a year BUT if I wanted to make any major alterations I had to pay £400 to get permission (just a letter basically!!).
Firstly see if you can buy the freehold when you buy the house. I did that with my first house and it was super cheap.
If you can’t do that then you can ask the freeholder nicely. After 2 years owning you can legally force the freeholder to sell you the freehold but it’s a faff and can be expensive.
My freeholder was one of the “bad” ones that has been in the press a lot, based on London, so I was worried it might be a nightmare.
I thought I would take a chance and be nice and I basically sent them a pleasant letter that said “I would like to buy the freehold, I know we can go the legal route but can we come to an agreement between us?”.
To my surprise they sent me a letter with a form to fill in and a bill for £400 some of which were the fees from the Land registry and the rest went to the freeholder for their time doing the legal paperwork.
Took a long time to come through but that was due to Covid.
So it’s possible to do easily and cheaply BUT the above approach won’t work if you have a leasehold that earns the freeholder a lot of money - like the ones for flats that are only 99 years or new houses which have those nightmare increasing rents. If it’s an old house and the ground rent is really low then it could be pretty easy as I proved.
It does all depend on what the leasehold actually controls. My last house it literally did nothing and didn’t affect anything I did in the house so I didn’t really need to buy it - the new place I was saving money in the future. So ask what the leasehold actually says!!
In areas such as where I am very long leaseholds for regular houses are a common thing and don’t affect house prices like short leases on flats do.
Cheers for the feedback. Sounds like there are lots of questions to ask.
Daughter bought hers quite easily. We’ve tried twice but the landlord seems intent on making it hard work.
The devil's in the detail, I guess.
The house I moved out of was leasehold, I had no idea until I got a copy of the deeds. The lease was for a millennium, the leaseholder was some local vicarage from a hundred years ago and the last time the lease was collected on it was one pound four shillings and sixpence for (I believe) the entire row of terraces.
The new house I got a collection letter out of the blue, it was something like £1.60 for the year.
On the other hand, I hear there's new builds going up with ten year leases that suddenly leap from a couple of quid to hundreds when it expires. Kinda scammy.
Lots of strange leasehold arrangements down here in the SW, including one that is almost exclusively in and around Bath only and seen very rarely elsewhere in the country. Get a decent local solicitor who knows the area to advise rather than one of the big national factories.
