Fixed-fee leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park:

While any conveyancing practice can theoretically handle your leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park, your mortgage provider may unwilling to work with them if the firm are not on their list of approved solicitors for conveyancing

Frequently asked questions relating to Manor Park leasehold conveyancing

There are only 68 years remaining on my flat in Manor Park. I need to get lease extension but my landlord is absent. What are my options?

If you meet the appropriate requirements, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can submit an application to the County Court for for permission to dispense with the service of the initial notice. This will mean that your lease can be extended by the Court. However, you will be required to prove that you or your lawyers have used your best endeavours to find the freeholder. On the whole a specialist would be helpful to try and locate and to produce an expert document which can be used as evidence that the freeholder is indeed missing. It is advisable to get professional help from a conveyancer both on investigating the landlord’s disappearance and the vesting order request to the County Court overseeing Manor Park.

I’m about to sell my 2 bed flat in Manor Park.Conveyancing is yet to be initiated but I have just had a yearly maintenance charge invoice – what should I do?

It best that you pay the service charge as normal because all ground rent and service charges will be apportioned on completion, so you will be reimbursed by the buyer for the period running from after the completion date to the next payment date. Most management companies will not acknowledge the buyer until the service charges have been paid and are up to date so it is important for both buyer and seller for the seller to show that they are up to date. Having a clear account will assist your cause and will leave you no worse off financially.

I work for a long established estate agent office in Manor Park where we have experienced a few leasehold sales derailed as a result of short leases. I have been given inconsistent advice from local Manor Park conveyancing firms. Can you shed some light as to whether the owner of a flat can instigate the lease extension process for the purchaser on completion of the sale?

As long as the seller has been the owner for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to commence the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. The benefit of this is that the proposed purchaser need not have to sit tight for 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed before, or at the same time as completion of the disposal of the property.

An alternative approach is to agree the lease extension with the freeholder either before or after the sale. If you are informally negotiating there are no rules and so you cannot insist on the landlord agreeing to grant an extension or transferring the benefit of an agreement to the buyer.

Can you provide any advice for leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park from the point of view of expediting the sale process?

  • Much of the delay in leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park can be avoided where you instruct lawyers the minute your agents start advertising the property and ask them to put together the leasehold information which will be required by the purchasers’ conveyancers.
  • The majority freeholders or managing agents in Manor Park charge for supplying management packs for a leasehold homes. You or your lawyers should find out the actual amount of the charges. The management pack sought on or before finding a buyer, thus accelerating the process. The typical amount of time it takes to receive management information is three weeks. It is the most common reason for delay in leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park.
  • A minority of Manor Park leases require Licence to Assign from the landlord. If this is the case, you should place the estate agents on notice to make sure that the purchasers put in hand bank and professional references. The bank reference should make it clear that the buyer is able to meet the yearly service charge and the actual amount of the service charge should be quoted in the bank’s letter. You will therefore need to provide your estate agents with the actual amount of the service charge so that they can pass this information on to the buyers or their solicitors.
  • If you have had conflict with your freeholder or managing agents it is very important that these are settled before the property is put on the market. The buyers and their solicitors will be reluctant to purchase a property where there is an ongoing dispute. You may have to bite the bullet and discharge any arrears of service charge or resolve the dispute prior to the buyers completing the purchase. It is therefore preferable to have any dispute settled prior to the contract papers being issued to the buyers’ solicitors. You are still duty bound to disclose details of the dispute to the buyers, but it is clearly preferable to reveal the dispute as historic as opposed to unresolved.
  • If you have the benefit of shareholding in the Management Company, you should make sure that you hold the original share certificate. Organising a re-issued share certificate is often a time consuming process and delays many a Manor Park conveyancing deal. If a new share is necessary, do contact the company officers or managing agents (where relevant) for this as soon as possible.

  • After years of negotiations we cannot agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Manor Park. Can we issue an application to the Residential Property Tribunal Service?

    in cases where there is a absentee freeholder or if there is dispute about what the lease extension should cost, under the relevant statutes you can apply to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal to determine the amount due.

    An example of a Lease Extension decision for a Manor Park premises is 240 Strone Road in January 2014. the tribunal held that the price to be paid for the freehold interest was£23,538 of which£13,017 is attributable to the ground floor flat and £10,521 to the first floor flat. This case affected 2 flats. The remaining number of years on the lease was 65.5 years.

    What makes a Manor Park lease unacceptable for security purposes?

    There is nothing unique about leasehold conveyancing in Manor Park. Most leases are unique and drafting errors can result in certain sections are missing. For example, if your lease is missing any of the following, it could be defective:

    • A provision to repair to or maintain elements of the property
    • A duty to insure the building
    • Clauses dealing with recovering service charges for expenditure on the building or common parts.
    • Maintenance charge proportions which don’t add up to the correct percentage

    A defective lease will likely cause issues when trying to sell a property primarily because it impacts on the ability to obtain a mortgage on the property. Accord Mortgages Ltd, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and Barclays Direct all have very detailed requirements when it comes to what is expected in a lease. Where a lender has been advised by their lawyers that the lease is defective they may refuse to provide security, forcing the buyer to withdraw.

    Other Topics

    Lease Extensions in Manor Park