My fiance and I may need to let out our Halkyn basement flat for a while due to taking a sabbatical. We used a Halkyn conveyancing firm in 2004 but they have closed and we did not have the foresight to seek any advice as to whether the lease prohibits the subletting of the flat. How do we find out?

Notwithstanding that your previous Halkyn conveyancing lawyer is not available you can check your lease to check if you are permitted to let out the property. The accepted inference is that if the deeds are non-specific, subletting is allowed. Quite often there is a prerequisite that you must seek consent from your landlord or other appropriate person before subletting. This means that you cannot sublet in the absence of prior permission. Such consent must not not be unreasonably withheld. If your lease does not allow you to sublet you should ask your landlord for their consent.

I only have 62 years unexpired on my flat in Halkyn. I now want to extend my lease but my landlord is absent. What options are available to me?

On the basis that you meet the appropriate requirements, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the County Court for for permission to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will enable the lease to be extended by the Court. However, you will be required to prove that you or your lawyers have made all reasonable attempts to locate the lessor. On the whole a specialist should be useful to conduct investigations and prepare a report to be used as proof that the freeholder can not be located. It is advisable to get professional help from a solicitor in relation to investigating the landlord’s absence and the application to the County Court overseeing Halkyn.

I am attracted to a couple of maisonettes in Halkyn which have in the region of 50 years remaining on the leases. Should I regard a short lease as a deal breaker?

There are plenty of short leases in Halkyn. The lease is a legal document that entitles you to use the premises for a prescribed time frame. As the lease gets shorter the marketability of the lease reduces and it becomes more expensive to extend the lease. This is why it is generally wise to extend the lease term. It is often difficult to sell a property with a short lease as mortgage lenders may be unwilling to lend money on such properties. Lease extension can be a protracted process. We advise that you get professional assistance from a conveyancer and surveyor with experience in this field

We expect to complete the disposal of our £500000 garden flat in Halkyn in just under a week. The management company has quoted £420 for Landlord’s certificate, building insurance schedule and previous years service charge statements. Is the landlord entitled to charge an administration fee for a leasehold conveyance in Halkyn?

Halkyn conveyancing on leasehold maisonettes ordinarily involves administration charges raised by landlords agents :

• Addressing pre-exchange enquiries
• Where consent is required before sale in Halkyn
• Supplying insurance information
• Deeds of covenant upon sale
• Registering of the assignment of the change of lessee after a sale

Your lawyer will have no control over the level of the charges for this information but the average costs for the information for Halkyn leasehold premises is £350. For Halkyn conveyancing transactions it is customary for the seller to pay for these costs. The landlord or their agents are under no legal obligation to answer such questions most will be willing to do so - albeit often at exorbitant prices where the fees bear little relation to the work involved. Unfortunately there is no law that requires fixed charges for administrative tasks. Neither is there any legal time frame by which they are required to provide answers.

What makes a Halkyn lease unmortgageable?

There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Halkyn. Most leases is drafted differently and legal mistakes in the legal wording can result in certain sections are not included. For example, if your lease is missing any of the following, it could be defective:

• Repairing obligations to or maintain parts of the building
• Insurance obligations
• A provision for the recovery of money spent for the benefit of another party.
• Maintenance charge proportions which don’t add up to the correct percentage

You will have difficulties when selling your property if you have a defective lease as they can affect a potential buyer’s ability to obtain a mortgage. Birmingham Midshires, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of Ireland all have very detailed conveyancing instructions when it comes to what is expected in a lease. Where a lender has been advised by their lawyers that the lease is problematic they may refuse to grant the mortgage, obliging the buyer to withdraw.

Leasehold Conveyancing in Halkyn - A selection of Questions you should consider Prior to buying

The best form of lease arrangement is if the freehold title is owned by the leaseholders. In this scenario the leaseholders have being in charge if their destiny and notwithstanding that a managing agent is often retained if it is bigger than a house conversion, the managing agent employed by the leaseholders. Can you inform me if there are any major works on the horizon that will likely increase the service fees? Where a Halkyn lease has fewer than 80 years it will affect the salability of the property. It is worth checking with your bank that they are happy with remaining years on the lease. Leases with fewer than 80 years remaining means that you will almost definitely have to extend the lease at some point and it is worth finding out how much this will be. Remember, in most cases you will need to own the property for 24 months in order to be legally able to exercise a lease extension.

Other Topics

Lease Extensions in Halkyn