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House Hunting

18:58 / 15.03.05

Ahoy, fellow 'lithers.

So, my SO and I are looking for a 2 bed flat in need of a refurb down Brighton way. Being new to the property game it's a rather bewildering and often frustrating experience.
Take leaseholds, for example, I can see their uses, particularly if you live in a property split into many flats, but they lose some of their appeal when you're talking about a building split into 2 maisonettes. Essentially a buyer finds themselves in a situation where they can never know exactly what they are buying because it's nigh on impossible to get a look at the lease agreement before putting in an offer. And then, even when you can get a look at the lease, you have to rely on a lawyer to translate it for you and bring to light any areas of potential difficulty.
Of course, that won't tell you the whole story. (In many cases) You still won't know how helpful/proactive/honourable the management company will be once you're in (you could find out, but that's a lot more work...). And then there are the fees. Okay, so with leaseholds you won't have to pay any building insurance, but will need to pay the lawyer to look over the aforementioned document. You might have to pay a great deal of money to get the lease extended. And then there's the possibility that you'll be forced to pay for maintenance that would have nothing to do with you had you gone with a freehold property in the first place.

Finally (I think) there's the intangible, but nonetheless important fact that leaseholders don't own their property. That it will never truly be home - at least in a legal sense.

The problem is at the moment the two properties we're currently interested in are both leasehold. So, has anyone out there in Barbeland got any experience with leaseholds? Any horror stories? Any happy endings? Any Advice?

In fact, advice in general wouldn't go amiss.

09:34 / 16.03.05

Up, up and away...

12:55 / 16.03.05

Well, as far as I'm aware, the majority of domestic properties in England (as opposed to Scotland - I don't know about Wales or NI) are leasehold - it's a weird system, that someone else owns the land your property stands on, but for the most part it seems to work reasonably well and you just pay your £50 a year or whatever.

What you're talking about, though, sounds more like there's a management company and a service charge. The flat I owned in London was like that. To be honest, I found it worked well - I didn't need to worry about external maintenance - the windows, roof, gardens, security entrance etc were all managed for me. There would be a monthly meeting with a rep from the management company and they were well-attended affairs, with people being very forthright about what they wanted. And that particular company (Peverel) seemed to respond well.

So - I wouldn't be put off by it. As I said, in most cases, property in England only means you own the house, but not the land. So managed properties aren't different in that sense. Read all the documentation, talk to your lawyer about any guarantees that service fees won't leap up from one year to another, and look around to see if maintainance is being done well.

I can't remember if you asked anything else - I'm off to reread your message!

13:06 / 16.03.05

Okay, so I slightly misread you.

AFAIK, if it's just a house split in two flats, you won't pay any maintenance charges, and it won't cover your buildings insurance - you just pay around £50 ground rent a year and that's it. It does have some implications in terms of what happens when work needs done, but in many cases that will work in your favour. For instance, if you live in the top flat, and the roof starts leaking, the ground floor has to share in the costs.

(As an aside, in Scotland, where you DO own flats freehold, you STILL have to pay a share of roof-fixing or drain-unblocking, even if you live in the middle floor and consider neither affects you.)

My sister owned a flat and the leaseholder couldn't be found. So she and the man upstairs had an agreement drawn up regarding exactly this sort of thing, to ensure no problems would arise if work needed done. She still had to pay the annual, nominal charge to her lawyer, who would keep it (I assume!) until the leaseholder popped up from whatever Caribbean island s/he was sunning him/herself on.

I'm not sure if I'm being helpful here, or just repeating stuff you already know. I suppose I'm saying, don't be too put off - it works fairly well, even if the underlying concept (that some wealthy git owns the land you live on) is a bit revolting.

13:27 / 16.03.05

I'm not sure about the majority of domestic properties. Almost all the houses I've looked at are freeholds*, and a fair few of the flats.
In fact, I think people are increasingly put off by leaseholds, hence the apparent rise in freeholds and imminent introduction of the commonhold.

I'm not sure if I illustrated some of my complaints particularly well. By not knowing what you're buying I was bemoaning the fact that it is often very difficult to find out your rights as a leaseholder before you put in an offer and the lawyers get involved. For example, will I be allowed floorboards, and will I be able to open up the chimney are two questions I'm having a great deal of difficulty getting answered at the mo'.
More generally, I was also pointing out that leaseholders usually don't know whether their management company will be reliable, etc... Another example: I have a friend who's just been hit up for three grand by what appears to be an unscrupulous management company. He's in the process of contesting it.

As for the charges, no I'm not just talking about annual maintenance fees (which, down this way, are considerably more than 50 quid a year).

*As I said in my previous post, leaseholds only really make sense in blocks of flats

13:36 / 16.03.05

Every leasehold I've seen in Brighton has an annual fee of upwards of £300 a year. This seems to include ground rent, building insurance (could be wrong about this), and a chunk of money destined for a maintenance pot.

13:37 / 16.03.05

Oh, the 50 quid thing was a wrongheaded response to your first post.