Buying a property in the U.K. can you advise me about leasehold??

[janieco]

I am in the process of buying a property in the U.K. What should have been a 4 week settlement is now in to week 14 with no end in sight!!

 

It is a ground floor flat, one of 2 with the top floor being flat 2.

 

The flat is ''title good leasehold'', I have been told this is not a good type of leasehold to have. Further more there does not appear to be a council planning certificate issued that recognises the creation of the 2 flats in the first place. The lease is for 125 years. Can anyone advise me

regarding the lease status or their own experience with a ''title good leasehold''.

 

My solicitor has all but given up as the owners legal people are not responding to requests for further info !! :confused:

[pintpot]

This is not uncommon

 

A "good leasehold" title means that whilst the leasehold is registered at the Land Registry and the freehold *may* be, at the time the leasehold title was registered, the LR were not provided with absolute proof of the freeholder and therefore that they had the right to grant the leasehold. This one is really up to the vendor to sort out, if the titles cannot be matched absolutely then it can be dealt with by means of an indemnity policy that they should pay for (not expensive). This will indemnify you in case there really is an issue and the "real" freeholder turns up and causes problems

 

It is a similar story with the lack of planning consent. Again, the vendor should indemnify you against the council taking enforcement action for the unauthorised alteration. In this case there is a tight statue of limitations on the council in any event - they can only take enforcement action for work that was done within the past 4 years I think, after that you are safe anyway. So again the indemnity policy is pretty cheap

 

More importantly than the planning consent, when the flats were created, whoever did it should have got a Building Control sign off to demonstrate the council inspected the work and that it met building regulations. This is particularly important with flats because fire separation and fire escape safety is one of the key requirements, as is proper separation of the electrical and water/wastewater installations in the two flats, so it's a safety/risk issue for you as well as a legal one

 

A lot depends on when the conversion was done. If it is recent then there is no excuse for not having proper (absolute) title, nor for the lack of planning consent (and as per the above, you are at more risk of planning enforcement action if it's recent) - so I would walk away personally, as any flat without this paperwork done recently ought to ring alarm bells. If it is an old building, converted ages ago, then the lack of documentation is more likely to just be a legacy issue of when the law was different, or documents being lost in the inervening years, so as long as you get indemnified you ought to be fine

 

I assume you know who the freeholder is (or your solicitor does). You need to know because matters such as responsibility for common areas and responsibility for fixing the building fabric that envelopes the flats (like the roof and walls) have to be sorted out, this stuff should be in the leasehold title deeds.

 

Also your solicitor sounds a bit rubbish tbh. It is their job to sort this sort of thing out and advise you appropriately. Remember it is a buyer's market at the moment, so don't be afraid of pushing the vendors hard, most of this is their problem to resolve.

[janieco]

Thank you pintpot, thats very helpfull and gives me a much needed insight in to the mysterious world of U.K. property !!