scoobyster

Does anyone have experience of buying the freehold on their property?

I am in a flat which is in a block of four. The freeholder/management company are pretty useless and charge a lot for doing next to nothing. I spoke to them yesterday and they want me to chase their joiner for fixing issues I notified them about months ago. They also won’t allow me to put my boiler in the loft (which is not communal and only accessible from within my property) and want to charge a fee for a letter allowing me to replace my own windows. All in all I’m not impressed and want to feel like I genuinely own my own home. The existing lease runs until 2086 so I’m worried that it’s getting towards the time where mortgage companies would worry about it and it will start to devalue the property.

The flats are worth around £100k each I would guess and the ground rent is fixed at only £30/year forever (the freeholder makes their money on ‘fees’), 76 years to run on the lease. The calculator on www.leaseholdenfranchisement.co.uk suggests the freehold is therefore worth £3800 – 5700 if I’m understanding it correctly. Does that sound about right? Any suggestions on what I’ll be looking at in legal fees? I know that one of my neighbours is up for setting up a residents’ management company but I don’t know the others well so haven’t approached them yet, though hopefully they’d be up for it too. There is an identical block of flats next door who are presumably with the same freeholder. I guess it’s not practical to have the two blocks under the same residents’ company, but would there be scope to save on legal fees or even the cost of the freehold if I got them involved in parallel somehow?

If the flat was sold with a share in a company owning the freehold would this be likely to add significantly to the value? I suspect it’s a case that poor lease terms might devalue a property but not vice versa! What do you reckon? I don’t plan to live here forever so would like a return on the investment.

cookstar

iTrader: (6)

Good luck, I absolutely HATE dealing with leaseholds, and managing agents. So I can see where you are coming from.

You're right though 76 years is starting to get to that point, that will put buyers/lenders off, I personally wont buy anything with less than 85 years.

Would I pay more for a flat with a share of the Freehold? Yes, but not a lot.

douglasb

I'm not an expert, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have one residents' company for both blocks. It would need to be set out that although everyone is in the one residents' company it would only be residents of Block A that are responsible for paying for repairs to Block A, but I suspect that you may be able to get better prices for eg. having the exteriors of both blocks painted at the same time.

Definitely worth investigating if the folk in the other block are also interested in buying the freehold.

hodgy0_2

a very close friend is one of the UK's leading experts in the field of Leasehold Enfranchisement

http://www.marr-johnsonstevens.co.uk/


I will have a quick chat re your circumstances and report back (I speak to him most weeks)