How to sell flat with a short lease?
Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at
11:33 am
Quick Property Sale
Related articles:
- Sell your flat now with Sell Flat Fast Sell Flat Fast can promise to buy your flat from you in as little as 7 days. We are a property buying company who specializes in the quick sale of...
- Can you sell a flat with a short leasehold? We have a leasehold flat with 55 years remaining on the lease. We are trying to sell the flat but would like to know is it worth extending it...
- Two different Estate Agents have valued my house at 30,000 pounds difference. Who do I believe? Help please?! The houses in our street have sold in the last year for about 175-200k. The 198k one was apparently in tip top repair. The house I’m selling...
- how to sell my flat and buy a house? I own 50% of a one bedroom ground floor flat - the other half is owned by a housing association. I would like to to sell my half and...
- Can i sell my flat before my tenants lease ends? I want to sell, but understand that my tenants have the legal right to stay until the end of their lease (5 more months). It could potentially take that...
Filed under: flat sale
Assuming you are in the UK.If the lease is less than say 50-60 years a buyer could have difficulty in getting a mortgage regardless of the ‘credit crunch’.. Under the leasehold reform act you can request a new 125 year lease. BUT, you will have to pay for it. Suggest you get your solicitor to negotiate with the freeholder.
There will always be a buyer, I would suggest trying one of the cash buyer companies, such as
Alternatively you could see what options there are to extend your lease by contacting the freeholder. You may even be able to purchase a share of the freehold jointly with other leaseholders in the building.
How short is short?
When we sold our flat 2 years ago with a 76 year (out of original 99) lease we were told that was short and it took a little while to sell but we still got the price we wanted. We were told at the time that mortgage companies want 50 years on top of the 25 year mortgage (so 75 year minimum), however, when we recently re-mortgaged, we noticed that they wanted only 25 years on top (not that it applies to us now, as we moved to a freehold house).
Estimates for extending the lease varied from £1k to £12k. I spoke to our management company (who acted for the freeholder) at the time and were told they couldn’t say how much it might be, but we would have to make an offer to the freeholder and they would accept or reject and negotiate.
Buyers will use any excuse to get the price down, especially now.
Good luck.