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Purchasing Freehold

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Can anyone help. We have a property that is leasehold and this is owned by COPPEN (ESTATES) LIMITED Sheffield. In the past 3 years we have owned the property we haven't paid the ground rent nor has it been requested. The owner before us didn't pay it either! Are we at risk of back payments or is it the duty of the freeholder to request the monies?

 

Also we would like to purchase the freehold, does anyone have an ideas of cost for this?

Thanks

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How long is your lease? That will make a huge difference to the price of the freehold (not including legal fees).

A long lease ie.hundreds of years will be a lower cost. A short lease will be more expensive. Anything less than 80 years is a problem.

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A property with less than 67 years left on the lease is a major problem, unmortgagable by the major lenders. I speak from personal experience. If you can afford it get the freehold bought, even if you have to put it onto the mortgage.

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hi there I would be very careful with dealing with your mentioned freeholders as they do pull fast ones regarding late payments and don't like selling the freeholds to any property in their control you can get a very good publication free from the leasehold advisory service its got loads of info plus theirs a freehold calculator on the net which can work out how much your freeholds worth for free good luck you will need it if dealing with them and their silly prices for freehold worth pennys

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hi there I would be very careful with dealing with your mentioned freeholders as they do pull fast ones regarding late payments and don't like selling the freeholds to any property in their control you can get a very good publication free from the leasehold advisory service its got loads of info plus theirs a freehold calculator on the net which can work out how much your freeholds worth for free good luck you will need it if dealing with them and their silly prices for freehold worth pennys

I get where you are coming from, but not dealing with the issue may exasperate the situation in the long term. Leasehold is a bad situation and should have some government intervention to eradicate these cowboys who holding leaseholders to ransom.

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when I was looking to buy two years ago leasehold properties made up a significant proportion of the houses that were available in my chosen location/price/size etc. I had to do a lot of independent research on what leasehold actually meant - to me as prospective leaseholder; some estate agents couldn't tell me the status of a property and/or how long a lease was. Quickest way to lose a viewing!

I settled on the premise that a lease of hundreds of years was acceptable.

I did turn down a nicer property further up the same road i eventually bought on because the lease remaining was 88 years. Maybe the estate agent got it wrong as the property i bought on the same street has over 850 years left on it, all built around 1890-1910.

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totally agree with you mate I have being trying to buy my lease hold from them for years will not reply to any letters sent by me so know what their going to go through most lawyers make it unreal to buy your freehold with their charges

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No doubt Jeffrey will be able to give advice on this

 

---------- Post added 02-04-2015 at 21:14 ----------

 

totally agree with you mate I have being trying to buy my lease hold from them for years will not reply to any letters sent by me so know what their going to go through most lawyers make it unreal to buy your freehold with their charges[/quote

Out of interest, who is your freeholder? Not St Giles Property is it?

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coppen estates lol

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coppen estates lol

I would seriously consider employing the services, on a professional basis, of Jeffrey Shaw, one of the administrators on SF. He sounds like a guy with an in depth knowledge of this sort of thing in the Sheffield area, might be worth a chat with him?

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We own a flat built in 2008 and weren't asked pay ground rent until last year when we were landed with a bill for £360. I was unhappy at this naturally as we had presumed it was included in the service charge

 

When I investigated I found that the freeholder could only claim backdated ground rent when the total got over £350 which suggests they had originally forgotten to charge it and then decided to wait until it hit this amount before asking for it.

 

This might apply in your case too perhaps?

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I'm in the exact same situation as the OP. Coppen own my freehold but I've never received a bill & never paid any ground rent. The previous owner of the house never did either. She told me that as ours is in a block of 4 the end house pays it for all of us and never collects the money back. I don't know if this is true or not. The ground rent is £1.50 a year so it might well be true!

 

Jeffrey Shaw did the conveyancing on my house purchase and I can highly recommend him. I will be using his services when I am ready to purchase my freehold.

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