Lease Extensions
If you own a leasehold flat and would like to extend your lease, please log onto our online portal and complete our simple online form.
We have compiled the below FAQ’s to help answer any queries that you may have in relation to this process.
We would also recommend that you obtain independent legal / professional advice with regard to extending your lease.
The leasehold advisory service is a government funded website which provides impartial advice about lease extensions. This could be a useful resource to gain a better understanding of your options in regard to extending your lease.
Why should I extend my Lease?
A leasehold property lasts only for a period of time or term of years. As the lease term gets shorter, the value of the lease decreases making it more expensive to extend.
Having a longer lease term ie over 100+ years is more desirable to potential buyers if you are thinking of selling.
It can also be difficult to find a suitable mortgage with a short lease property ie under 80 years.
You can ascertain this by reviewing a copy of your lease, a copy should have been provided to you when you purchased your property. If you don’t hold a copy, you can request this from the land registry directly or we can provide a copy by clicking here.
We typically will look to extend the lease to a new term of 125 years, the current ground rent including any uplifts would still be payable as per your existing lease.
Yes. You will be required to appoint your own solicitor.
A lease extension is a legal process similar to when you purchased your property and a solicitor will deal with all the legal formalities (for example, agreeing the paperwork or dealing with HM Land Registry).
Upon receipt of your agreed terms, we will write to your solicitors to request their undertaking for the landlords legal fees.
An undertaking is a promise by a solicitor to do/provide or pay something. An undertaking will be binding on the party providing it.
Your instructed solicitor will need to provide the undertaking to us before we are able to proceed. We will not be able to proceed further with the lease extension without receiving the undertaking from your solicitor.
Once the freeholders solicitor has been instructed the process typically takes 3 months. However, this can change due to individual circumstances.
Yes, many lease extensions are linked to a sale of a property, we are happy to complete the transactions simultaneously as long as our team are provided with all relevant information and scheduled completion dates within enough time.
