Regards

The problem is that they have disappeared. Initially they moved out of London, and then subsequently contacted the owners of the other flat in the house to see if they would be interested in buying the other share of freehold since they were intending on emigrating. We have tried to contact them on several occasions at their last given address in the UK but to no avail. Having spoken with the current owners of the other flat in the house they would be more than happy to buy the other share of freehold if a situation arose where they could. We are now wondering what provision the law might have for absentee freeholders, and if there is a process through which my neighbours might be able to obtain the other share of freehold which it would seem is actually the freehold over my own flat?

A bit of a tricky one… any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am trying to sell my house which I have lived in for just over three years, four sales have fallen through so far because the surveys have discovered that it is of a steel frame construction. It seems that most mortgage lenders will not lend against this type of house and this is scaring people off. This is the first we knew about the issue, when we bought the house we took out a mortgage with Northern Rock (and have since remortgaged with Halifax) and the steel frame was never pointed out to us and did not appear on either survey. The people we bought the house from also failed to mention this to us, if they had we would not have bought the house.
We don’t seem to be able to sell the house and I think that the only way we will sell is if we dramatically reduce the price to make it worth while for someone to buy it, although we will obviously lose money doing this as we have to pay back our outstanding mortgage.=20

Is there anything we can do legally? Should someone have legally informed us of the unusual construction when we bought it?

I would appreciate any advice you can give me.

Regards
Amanda

Been reading your website great tips.
Here goes, I am in the middle of buying a Freehold Property, but later found out that the property still has a lease on it. Due to me buying the Freehold and Lease the Mortgage lender has refused to release the money due to not enough years left on lease and that I may sell the lease left on house.
I want the house for myself and have no intension of selling it. know I have advised my solicitors to merge the Lease and Freehold together getting rid of the Lease on it or applying restrictions to the contract which will not allow me to sell the lease to satisfy the mortgage lender. But this is taking ages and I don’t know if I am being messed about by my solicitors as whoever I have spoken too said this is a simple process. Please advise

Just came across your site and have a question. Wonder if you can help me.

My father died in June this year. He left my mother with an interest only mortgage of approx. £68,000. My brother, sister and I are wondering if we jointly paid my mother’s monthly mortgage payments, could we get the house put in our 3 names? If so, are there any legal fees to pay for this? What is the legal term for what we are suggesting? Would her mortgage lender accept this? Would there be any stamp duty to pay? What we would like is to be joint owners of the house and of course our mother would continue to live there.

I’d be very grateful for any advice you can give.

Many thanks

Jules

you breifly mentioned a crossover lease above. i’m in the middle of a purchase and my solicitor said that the property i’m buying is on a crossover lease. He didn’t explain it very well. I was just wondering if you could give me more details, as much as you know about a crosslease. are there any advantages/disadvantages? should they be avoided

many thanks
lorenzo

I’m hoping you can give me some valuable advice. My husband and I are currently in the process of selling our leasehold flat. When the purchasers solicitor made a number of enquiries at the start of the process they referred to a defective lease. After much investigation on my part as my solicitor just waited for post to arrive rather than picking up the phone, I found out that when the lease was extended prior to my husband and I buying the property, the previous lease was not referred to and as such the lease was defective. It has taken my solicitor about 8 weeks to get round to asking the appropriate questions to the freeholder, my home move solicitors, and as such has caused us considerable delay. I am now waiting to hear how much the free holder will charge to draft the deed of variation and how long it will take. It has caused us a lot of financial difficulty as the flat is currently vacant, we have since moved and are renting awaiting this sale. The purchasers are still on board and eager to move in but their solicitor is saying that their mortgage requires this deed of variation. I guess my main question is really is it possible to exchange with a clause in there saying that we will complete in 3 weeks or so when the deed of variation has been completed? Its been 6 months so far and we are going into our 7th month, I’m sure the main reason for the delay is our solicitor and this is something I will be taking up with them. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I can’t really comment without seeing all the documents transferring ownership and knowledge of how this is being done.

Stamp duty is deduced from the value of the transaction. In freeholds it is done on the value of the sale in leaseholds it is done on th value of the sale and future ground rent. Presumably as the lady in the middle flat already owns the property she won’t be paying for the flat and so won’t be paying any consideration for it. So stamp duty will be calculated on the ground rent. Unless the ground rent is particularly high it shouldn’t attract any duty. However there may be other factors that I’m not aware of affecting this.

If you’ve had several solicitors look over the paperwork and all come to the same conclusion then I don’t think theres any way out I’m afraid.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

Regards
Luke