Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Buying and selling houses and flats, freehold and leasehold, in a chain or chain-free. A deliberately low-volume practice — fixed fees, senior oversight, and a named contact who knows your file.
We act on the sale and purchase of houses and flats across London and nationwide — freehold and leasehold, in a chain or chain-free, from a first flat to a substantial family house.
We are not a volume conveyancing operation. Every file is supervised by a senior solicitor or lawyer, and you deal with a named person who knows your matter rather than whoever happens to answer the telephone.
It is a different proposition from a factory, and it is priced accordingly. What it buys is judgement applied early, and a transaction that is actively managed rather than processed.
A sale is largely an exercise in producing information promptly. The transactions that complete quickly are the ones where the paperwork was gathered before a buyer was found.
We take instructions, complete identity and source of funds checks, and obtain the title. For a flat we also obtain the lease and every deed of variation, licence and consent, ask your lender for a redemption figure, and order the management pack — which is almost always the long pole in the tent.
Your protocol forms, the title, the lease and the management pack, sent to the buyer’s solicitor as a single package. A complete pack at the outset prevents most of the enquiries that would otherwise arrive in week six.
We answer the buyer’s enquiries, resolve anything the pack has raised, and agree the completion date. On exchange the deal becomes binding.
We receive the money, redeem your mortgage, account to you for the balance and deal with apportionments. For a flat we serve notice of the assignment on the landlord and hand over the share certificate where there is one.
A purchase is an exercise in finding out what you are actually buying, and in the right order — so that money is spent on searches only once the fundamentals are sound.
Identity and source of funds checks, then a first look at the contract pack. For a flat we read the lease and the management pack before anything else: unexpired term, ground rent, service charge, consents and building safety. If there is a fundamental problem you should know in the first week, not the sixth.
Local authority, drainage, environmental and any location-specific searches, with enquiries of the seller’s solicitor and, on a flat, of the landlord or managing agent.
We report to you in writing on the title, the lease, the searches and the replies, and explain anything needing a decision. Once you are satisfied and the finance is in place, we exchange and pay the deposit.
We complete, submit the stamp duty land tax return, register you at HM Land Registry and serve notice of the assignment and any charge on the landlord.
Where a purchase involves a mortgage, the file is handled by our consultant solicitor, who can act both for you and for your lender — one solicitor for the whole purchase, with the same leasehold experience behind it. We establish this at the first conversation so nothing is held up later.
A freehold purchase is largely about the title and the searches. A leasehold purchase adds a lease, a landlord, a management company, a service charge and — increasingly — a building safety position. These are the things we look at, and why.
Two thresholds matter and they do different things. Lender criteria vary, but caution typically begins where the term falls below ninety years, where the ground rent exceeds around 0.1% of the flat’s value, or where the rent reviews at intervals of less than twenty years. Separately, once a lease drops below eighty years the cost of extending rises sharply because marriage value becomes payable. Both are matters for the price you pay now.
Three years of accounts, the current budget, the reserve fund, arrears and — most importantly — whether major works are planned. A section 20 consultation notice in the pack changes the arithmetic of a purchase entirely.
Whether alterations were carried out with permission and whether the paperwork exists. This is the single most common defect we find, and it is usually a predecessor’s doing.
For taller buildings, the remediation position, the certificates, and whether the lease qualifies for the leaseholder protections. A lender will want clear answers.
Whether a share or membership passes with the flat, and whether the seller actually holds it — surprisingly often, they do not.
Where a lease turns out to be defective — percentages that do not total 100%, no obligation on anyone to repair part of the building, missing rights, an absent freeholder — we can deal with the variation, the consent or the vesting order as part of the same instruction, rather than the transaction waiting on another firm.
Freehold is simpler than leasehold, but a substantial house is rarely simple. The larger the property, the more there is to establish — and the more expensive it is to establish it late.
On a house of any size. Boundaries, rights of way, shared drives and drainage, and whether what is on the ground matches what is on the plan. Restrictive covenants and whether past works breached them. Planning permissions and building regulation certificates for anything the seller or a predecessor built.
On a larger or older property. Land beyond the immediate garden, outbuildings and annexes, private drainage and water supply, septic tanks and their regulatory position, agricultural or sporting rights, mines and minerals reservations, and title that may still be unregistered or only partly registered. Any of these can take weeks to resolve if they are found at the wrong moment.
On a managed estate. Estate rentcharges and the management company, with its own enquiries form, accounts and consents. A deed of covenant from the buyer, and a certificate before you can be registered. What the estate charge covers, how it is set, and whether the roads and open spaces have been adopted or never will be.
New build. Runs to the developer’s timetable rather than yours, with reservation fees, notice to complete provisions and long-stop dates. It repays careful reading rather than speed.
Where a lease is short, the sequencing decision matters more than anything else in the transaction — and it is the point at which having the enfranchisement work and the conveyancing under one roof makes a practical difference.
We are well placed to handle a sale alongside a lease extension, or immediately after one we have completed. Most conveyancing clients instruct us on the transaction alone and it has nothing to do with enfranchisement. But where the two do meet, they are handled together rather than by two firms writing to each other.
There are three levers. Extend before completion, which is cleanest where there is time. Assign the existing claim to the buyer. Or adjust the price and let the buyer serve their own notice after completion — which is now the most straightforward route, and increasingly what buyers prefer.
On assignments, a warning. The benefit of a section 42 notice is assignable only with the lease and never separately from it. If the lease is transferred without it, the notice is deemed withdrawn as at the date of the assignment — the claim is lost, the landlord’s costs fall due and no fresh claim can be brought for twelve months. The assignment must therefore be contemporaneous with the transfer. Where the paperwork is not right it is the landlord who will take the point, and a landlord who spots it has every reason to: the claim falls away and the leaseholder must start again a year later, at a higher premium. It is drafting where being nearly right is not enough, and a good reason to have the extension and the conveyancing in one pair of hands.
Whatever route is chosen, watch the eighty-year line. A lease that crosses it during a slow transaction becomes materially more expensive to extend, and whoever has not thought about that is the one who pays.
See also our lease extensions page, and our article on a short lease discovered mid-sale.
Eight to twelve weeks is a fair expectation. Very little of the variation comes from the legal work; almost all of it comes from four predictable places.
We order the management pack, the redemption figure and the searches at the outset rather than in sequence, and raise the leasehold enquiries that matter early because they take longest to answer. Where we act on a related sale and purchase we run them together, which removes a good deal of the back-and-forth between two firms.
Conveyancing has a poor reputation for communication and largely deserves it. We have built the service around the two complaints clients actually make: nobody tells them anything, and nobody senior looks at the file.
Not a call centre, and not a different person each time.
Every matter is supervised by a senior solicitor, with routine procedural work handled by our paralegal team so that the cost stays proportionate.
Where a flat’s lease needs attention — a variation, a missing consent, an absent freeholder — we can usually deal with it ourselves rather than referring it out while the transaction waits.
We tell you what is actually holding a transaction up, including when it is us. An honest week beats an optimistic fortnight.
And if we think you should not proceed, or should renegotiate, we will say so and explain why. A transaction that completes on a property with an unresolved problem is not a success.
Almost all of a modern transaction is conducted electronically, so where the property is matters far less than it once did. We act regularly for buyers and sellers well outside London, and for owners living overseas — our digital onboarding and anti-money laundering processes are built for it.
A first meeting is usually by email, telephone or in person at our offices. Video is available where it suits you, but it is not something we insist on.
We work to fixed fees, quoted before we start and banded by the price and the tenure of the property. There are no hourly surprises and no charges that appear at completion. Disbursements are third-party costs we incur on your behalf and recharge at cost.
Stamp duty land tax. Payable on most purchases above the relevant threshold, and calculated on the price. Rates differ for first-time buyers and for anyone who will own more than one property, so it should be established at the outset rather than at completion. We submit the return and pay the duty as part of the transaction.
Leasehold costs set by others. On a leasehold sale or purchase a number of charges are set by the landlord or managing agent rather than by us — the management pack in particular. We tell you what they are as soon as we know, but we do not control them.
Related sale and purchase. Where we act on both, the two are run together and quoted as one exercise.
We deliberately limit the number of transactions we take on. That is what allows a senior solicitor to oversee every file, a named contact to know your matter without looking it up, and a problem to be raised with you early rather than reported at the end.
Our clients rate us on Google and ReviewSolicitors, and a great many of them come back — for a second move, for a family member, or for the other side of a transaction years later. That is the measure we pay most attention to.
Banded by price and tenure, with the disbursements identified. No hourly surprises and nothing that appears for the first time on a completion statement.
Routine procedural work is handled by our paralegal team under supervision, which is what keeps a premium service affordable.
Where a transaction involves a short lease, an absent freeholder or a defective lease, it is dealt with here rather than referred out — and a sale alongside or after a lease extension is straightforward for us.
Members of ALEP — the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners — and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Eight to twelve weeks is realistic for a straightforward transaction. A leasehold sale can take longer if the management pack is slow, and a chain moves at the speed of its slowest link. We will give you an honest view at the outset and tell you when it changes.
We work to fixed fees quoted before we start, banded by the price and tenure of the property. On top of our fee there are disbursements — searches, Land Registry fees, bank charges and identity checks — and on a leasehold transaction a number of charges set by the landlord or managing agent. Stamp duty land tax may also be payable on a purchase.
On a leasehold sale the landlord or managing agent completes an enquiries form, usually the LPE1, and supplies the accounts, insurance, consents and building safety information. Nothing much can happen until it arrives, and turnaround varies from a week to two months. We order it on day one and chase it.
Because it affects both value and mortgageability. Lender criteria vary, but caution typically begins below ninety years, and once a lease falls under eighty years the cost of extending rises sharply because marriage value becomes payable. On a purchase it is a matter for the price you agree.
Often yes, but it needs handling. Your lender may decline, and the cost of extending will include marriage value. There are three routes: the seller extends before completion, the seller assigns their claim to you, or the price is adjusted and you serve your own notice after completion. We will tell you which suits your transaction.
Yes. The benefit of the claim can be assigned to your buyer, but it must be done at the same time as the transfer or the claim is lost and cannot be brought again for twelve months. A price adjustment allowing the buyer to serve their own notice is frequently simpler.
Whether the seller actually holds the share, whether the freehold company is up to date at Companies House, how long the lease has left, and whether the leases in the building are consistent. Owning a share of the freehold does not lengthen your lease — that is a separate step, though an easy one once you are a member.
On a sale there is no restriction and we deal with the redemption of your existing mortgage in the ordinary way. Where a purchase involves a mortgage, the file is handled by our consultant solicitor, who acts both for you and for your lender — so you still have one solicitor for the whole purchase.
Ordinarily a local authority search, a drainage and water search and an environmental search, plus anything specific to the area such as a mining or flood search. They answer particular questions from particular registers and are silent on everything else — they will not tell you whether the building is sound.
We report on the legal title, not the condition of the building. A survey is a separate and worthwhile exercise, and on a flat a survey read alongside the service charge history tells you more about your future costs than either does alone.
Exchange is the point at which the contract becomes binding and the completion date is fixed. Completion is when the money moves, the keys are released and ownership passes. The gap between them is usually one to four weeks.
It is the commonest defect we find on leasehold sales. The options are a retrospective licence from the landlord, a deed of variation where the works effectively extended the flat, or indemnity insurance. Take advice before anybody approaches the landlord, because an approach generally destroys the ability to insure.
Most leases require an incoming leaseholder to covenant directly with the landlord or management company, and many titles carry a restriction preventing registration of the buyer without a certificate confirming the lease requirements have been met. Both are dealt with as part of a leasehold purchase, and both carry fees set by the landlord.
On most purchases above the relevant threshold. The rate depends on the price, on whether you are a first-time buyer and on whether you will own more than one property. We establish the position at the outset, submit the return and pay the duty as part of the transaction.
Yes. Almost all of a modern transaction is conducted electronically, so where the property is matters far less than it once did. We act regularly for clients well outside London and for owners living overseas.
Tell us the address, whether you are buying, selling or both, the price or sale value, whether the property is freehold or leasehold, and whether there is a chain — and if it is a flat, the unexpired term and the ground rent if you know them. The value matters because our fees are banded by it, so with those details we can give you a firm fixed-fee quote and a realistic view of the timetable. If you are not sure of everything, get in touch anyway and we will tell you what we need. The first conversation is at no cost.
