QUESTION
I recently found out that I only have 46 years remaining on my lease in my one bed flat and it will cost me £60k to extend the lease to 100 years. I cannot sell the property without the full lease in case someone needs to take out a mortgage on it. I was wondering if there is a way to fund this in order for me to sell the property. My credit is not very good therefore I am unable to remortgage or obtain a secured loan. I have 2 children, therefore need to sell and move into a bigger place as soon as possible.
Please advise if you can help?
ANSWER
Thank you for your enquiry. As long as you have held your leasehold title and have been registered at the land registry for more than 2 years, it may be possible for you to start the statutory lease extension process and then, post completion of the sale, the purchasers step into your shoes and complete the lease extension.
So in essence, as part of the sale process, you would agree to serve a lease extension notice on the landlord and assign the benefit of that lease extension notice to the purchasers on completion of the sale. The buyers solicitors would usually draft the lease extension notice and deed of assignment of the benefit of the notice and your solicitor would just need to check the drafts produced. The buyers would then usually serve the lease extension notice once contracts for the sale have been exchanged.
This is quite a usual position and happens often on short lease sales.
The buyers will obviously need to be happy to step into your shoes on completion and no doubt you will need to re-negotiate the sale price to take into account the shorter lease but that may be a solution to avoid you having to find the funds to extend your lease.
Hope that helps.
Yashmin Mistry, Partner at JPC Law
