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Missing leasehold document

  • 30-09-2010 4:10pm
    #1
    paulac
    Closed Accounts Posts: 71 ✭✭


    Hi,

    I recently put my house on the market and it has now reached sale agreed. I am using the solicitor which my parents used originally to buy the house 15 years ago. The buyers solicitor has raised a few issues, firstly that the property is a leasehold. This was the first that I had heard of this, we never had to pay any ground rent or anything like that. Now apparently, the original leasehold document is missing. My solicitor said a few days ago that she had requested it from the land registry and that it would be processed in due course, and now today she is referring to it as the missing document and that it is not a big deal and that they can buy the freehold and that there's over 90 years left on the lease. She is proposing to do up a declaration for the buyers solicitor stating that there are no covenants, that we never had to pay ground rent etc and that there is no potential for any further development on the land.

    I have a bit of an uneasy feeling about the whole thing but unfortunately I really don't know much about this kind of thing. I'm nervous that the solicitor didn't cop any of this when the house was purchased 15 years ago so we might have arrears in ground rent etc but I'm not sure if thats possible or how you even find out!

    Its a bit complicated as well as the solicitor was appointed by my parents to deal with their estate and I can't change that.

    As this is new to me, I would really appreciate it if anyone had any experience with anything like this before, that you could give me an idea of what kind of questions to ask! I feel like I'm going in circles! I don't want the buyers to pull out and want everything to go as smoothly as possible btu I always don't want to get a big shock if it turns into a huge mess!

    Any suggestions would be appreciated!

    thanks


Comments

  • #2
    dats_right
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,168 ✭✭✭dats_right


    A long leasehold such as this is akin to a freehold. The declaration you refer would always be sought by a purchaser and is quite standard. So nothing unusual there. The issue of the missing lease can usually be easily overcome and your solicitor seems to be on top of it. So again nothing of particular concern there.

    An often used maxim of conveyancing solicitors is "the day you purchase is the
    day you sell", basically meaning that when you are buying you should ensure that the title will be acceptable to future purchasers. One issue I see here is that there is only 90 years left on the lease. Banks who are advancing a mortgage on leasehold property require a minimum of seventy five years left on the lease. Now whilst 90 years obviously exceeds the 75 year minimum required by the banks, but applying the prevous maxim, the purchaser's solicitor is obviously conscious that when his/her client sells in 15-20 years time that the purchaser at that stage would not be getting the necessary 75 years and could face difficulties selling at that stage.

    On this basis, I should imagine that the purchaser will ensure that the freehold can be acquired and either will request that the vendor attends to thos or will do so themselves on closing.


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