Leasehold Properties

Our home was lease hold but bought it ... if you see a property you like could you not ask the estate agent / solicitor if you could buy the lease no harm in asking, can only say yes or no

Thank you yes we are doing that and hoping we can come to some sort of deal.

The problems come in the details of the lease.
We have owned several leasehold properties. One property we looked at had a lease that stipulated that we had to buy the property insurance through the freeholder.
One other property we bought we had to pay the freeholder for permission to change the windows.
On our last property we had to pay £12,000 to bring the lease up to 100 years: the reason being, there was only 85 years left on the lease and mortgage companies considered that too low.

Some of the cons of leasehold include: You might need to pay an annual ground rent or service charge, both of which could be expensive. You may not be allowed to carry out major refurbishment or extension works. Sometimes this will require consent from the freeholder, and there's no guarantee they'll say yes.

If I remember correctly with a leasehold house you would own the house itself, but not the land it stands on.
Our second house on a fairly new estate was leasehold, and when we bought it we were able to buy the freehold at the same time so it would be worth asking if that's an option.

I lived in Warrington for some years and my property was leasehold, it is common as some parts of the wider Cheshire area were mining areas. Your conveyance will tell you this as a mining report will form part of the searches. My ground rent was very low about £20 per year and I had no issues with the leasehold. However, now you need to be careful to check that the Leasehold is not being 'sold on' to a managing company who will probably raise the GR. Having said that, the Leaseholder will need to notify all parties paying the GR. You could always ask the seller about the Lease, amount, length left, etc. as it will be part of the conveyance. Good luck.

You will own your house, just not the land it’s built on. New builds are mostly leasehold, but you can buy the freehold and the Government has ensured that the builders can’t increase the ground rent unrealistically.

This is a way for the Building Companies to sell something and retain an interest to sell on whilst the Freeholder gets income from people buying more years to top up their leases to make them more attractive to sell. It is absolutely despicable. There is no reason for them to do this. For this reason, I would never buy a leasehold house.

Our 1950's bungalow is leasehold and we pay £7 a year, it has been that amount since it was built and cannot be changed.

When we bought our first house, a new build which was leasehold, so we opted to buy the freehold and had to find another 10% of the purchase price to do so. In today’s terms that would be a hefty sum. As we were there 10 years, it equated to £57 a year, whereas I’m sure the annual ground rent would’ve been far less.
Still, we’ve always gone for freehold to avoid any nasty shocks.

I'm in NW too.. we lived in a house for 14 years which was leasehold....it had a peppercorn ground rent of £4 per year which was never collected the whole time we were there and none of the neighbours had ever paid either ?‍♀️

LadyGracie

Our 1950's bungalow is leasehold and we pay £7 a year, it has been that amount since it was built and cannot be changed.

Are you NW too?

I pay around 600 pounds a year.
Then probably another 600 phoning up the council to get them to do the jobs included in the leasehold.

My mother’s house in Cheshire (which we sold last year) was leasehold with a very long lease (hundreds of years) and the ground rent is £15pa & had not changed in the 50 years she lived there. Some of the people on her street have bought their leasehold out, but many properties in the whole area are leasehold. We had no problems selling, but it did cost a little more in solicitors fees.

I think all properties in Lancashire are leasehold, usually 999 years. Warrington used to be in Lancashire so is the same. I think it is something to do with it being the Duchy of Lancaster so ground rent goes to the Queen. I don't think many people pay ground rent.

I don't think it is anything to worry about.

LOUISA1523 no we live in South Wales.

Maybe worth googling 'what happens to a property when lease expires' ... make sure it is a long lease or don't buy ... my opinion

Last year when we buying a house we looked at two properties in different areas of the country who were leasehold. The first had ground rent / management charge around £350 pa which they reviewed every five years - the house was 4 yrs old. I believe if you were the first purchaser you had the option to buy outright but still had to pay management charge around 300 pa. There were stipulations on what you could do to property however that didnt stop loft conversions, kitchen extensions etc going up around estate. The second had a 999 year lease with 975 remaining. The ground rent was £100 pa collected yearly. Restrictions applied to windows, extensions, conservatory etc. It was around £150 to obtain permission from leaseholder to make a change. We asked EA about buying leasehold the cost was around 5k. We didn't buy either.

DD lives in Letchworth Garden City (Hertfordshire, so south east), where most of land is owned by the graden city corporation. Her lease has about 900 years to run on a 999 year least. The unchanging ground rent is £30 a year.

She could buy the freehold for about £2,000 but cannot see the point, the lease is so long it is as good as having the freehold and buying it far exceeds any ground rent she will pay out in her lifetime.

I see no point in getting hung-up over whether a property is leasehold or freehold. Many freehold properties have all sorts of covenants attached to them, stopping you doing all kinds of things, including, on houses we have owned or thought of buying, such as not hanging washing out on a Sunday (we didn't buy that house) to not mining for gravel or running an abattoir on the premises (a very pleasant Victorian semi on quite s mall plot, which we did buy.

It is the conditions and length of the lease that matters. If it is on a house built in the last 50 years check the lease very carefully for increases in the ground rent and the cost of increasing the lease. if like DD's house the original lease was 999 years in length. The ground rent is fixed for the duration, with few restrictions, then do not worry about it.

MerylStreep On our last property we had to pay £12,000 to bring the lease up to 100 years: the reason being, there was only 85 years left on the lease and mortgage companies considered that too low.
That's disgraceful. I had the lease extended on my 2 bed flat to 999 years and it cost £225 + VAT. It's just a bit of paperwork, so why so expensive?

I’ve lived in my leasehold 3 bed semi for over 35 years and pay just £10 year ground rent . As long as the property has a good long lease then there should be no problem whatsoever , your estate agent should advise you . It’s quite common these days for someone to buy a huge plot of land , build some houses on it and they will have regular income for many years to come off the land . Don’t be put off , just make sure it has a long lease .