Buying Leasehold

Does or has anyone on here bought the leasehold on their property ..Our house is 32 years old and has a 99 year lease which we are thinking of trying to buy does anyone know how much roughly it would cost we only pay £30 per year so it isn't worth paying too much for it as there is still 67 years to go and we have no plans to sell we just thought it would make life easier for our daughter if she wanted to sell it later on after we are gone as I believe you can't get a morgage on a leasehold property if there is less than 46 years to go...
Sue

Re: Buying Leasehold

I would advise you to go and see a solicitor.
We were sent a letter years ago to buy the lease for 300 and something pound which we did. So did some of our neighbours.
Later we all received a letter for yearly payment. Phoned to say we had bought it. Never here'd anything since. But we all still don't understand what we bought. Seems you can have more than one lease or ground rent.

Re: Buying Leasehold

I know it seems like a bit of a minefield I have looked it up on the net but it is very unclear and I think some of the articles I have viewed are a fair few years old we are going to a solicitor when we decide what to do thanks for answer to my post though shaz...

Re: Buying Leasehold

I think it should be fairly easy to buy the lease on your house if you wish to Suey and it is not very expensive. My mum bought the lease on her bungalow some years ago and it was quite a simple thing to do. The cost was the equivalent of a ten years ground rent, I think (can't remember how much) A freehold house is usually more attractive to buy than a freehold one, but check that there are no restrictions or obligations which need to be met. For example, she found that the church had a right to demand contributions towards the maintenance off the parish church (although this had never been asked for). She overcame it quite easily by purchasing a single payment insurance to cover her.

Re: Buying Leasehold

I think you may find that the lease may be more than a couple of hundred to buy, our Ground Rent is £26.00 pa, but our ex nextdoor neighbour bought their freehold prior to selling two years ago, and I think they paid £3500.00. Shortly after they bought the freehold, I phoned our freeholder (the same company as nextdoors) to ask how much our freehold would cost, their answer was "make us an offer". I think in recent years, legislation has been passed that limits what a freeholder can charge, in relation to property, or rateable value, or something, but I would have to do some digging to refresh my memory.

Re: Buying Leasehold

Thank you Aerolor and Spitfire for your replies we have a feeling we are probably talking thousands here I think it's one of those things that can either be really easy or a complete nightmare our lease is run by a company in Birmingham (chartered surveyors) so I am not expecting them to be cheap we are leaving it a couple of months till we inquire as having a few jobs done on the house...We had a good return when our mortgage ended earlier in the year so we thought it might be a good time to buy the freehold...Thanks again for the replies..
Sue

Re: Buying Leasehold

The difference between buying leasehold and freehold property is that with leasehold you never own the land that your property stands on - with freehold you do.

The land owner can demand a ground rent and - I think - the larger the ground area, the larger the rent.

I used to know a lot about conveyancing when I worked for a solicitor years ago, and I doubt the law will have changed much - but it is advisable to see a conveyancing solicitor to make sure.

If a lease is set for 99+ years then it remains leasehold property unless the land owner agrees to sell you the land, and land is extremely expensive these days.

Re: Buying Leasehold

All the land in the ACT is leasehold on crown leases, provided that the land is not required by either the Territory or Commonwealth, the Territory will grant a new residential lease towards the end of the 99 years, to the person holding the old residential lease, without payment (other than an administrative fee). This gives the lessee continuing security of tenure.

However since the ACT wasn't created until the 1920s who knows?

Re: Buying Leasehold

My mum's bungalow was a detached property set on a fair piece of land and the ground rent was not expensive - It was a 50 year old bungalow with a very long lease and think the ground rent was only £15.00 p.a.
An existing houseowner, converting a leasehold property to a freehold one by buying the lease is nowhere near as expensive as buying a piece of building land. The longer the lease has to run the cheaper it usually is to buy it.
It only cost £150. to buy the freehold of my mum's bungalow, plus the solicitor's fees and the one off cost of the insurance to safeguard any claim for maintenance that the parish church might have made. It was simply calculated as 10 x the annual ground rent.
Maybe we were lucky because it was an uncomplicated process to obtain the freehold for my mum's house and the leaseholder was hapy to sell. As long as you employ a decent solicitor (not just a conveyancer) and as long as the leaseholder agrees to sell the lease, then I don't see why it would be too complicated an issue. Flats and appartments can be more complicated and I imagine it also depends on where you live and if there are any future plans for the land and area.

Re: Buying Leasehold

Thanks Aerolor I hope ours is as easy about 1/3 of the houses on our estate of 66 houses have purchased the leasehold so I don't think it should be too hard once we get going we have a couple of jobs in progress on the house when these are finished we are going to see our Solicitor about it thanks again...Sue