How can you find out whether a property you are interested in is freehold or leasehold?

[2kidsintow]

We are interested in buying a property that is next door (up for sale as the owner has passed away). It is down on rightmove as being leasehold. They would have bought the property from the council a while ago. Our property was purchased by my grandfather on the same basis and is definitely freehold, not lease hold.

I've emailed the council housing officer to ask whether they can point us in the right direction.

Where else could I search to find out?

[ParsleyTheLioness]

Maybe the Land Registry? It sounds like it would be unusual for it to be leasehold in those circumstances.

[lightrain]

Estate agent would know this.

[2kidsintow]

Thankyou.
I've emailed the estate agent for clarification and to ask how long the leasehold has remaining, if it is indeed a leasehold.

If the money works out as worth the investment, I will stump up the £20 it costs to get a search on the land registry for more info.

[flow4]

If you put the address of the property into this Land Registry houseprice checking website, it will tell you how much it last sold for, and whether it is freehold or leasehold.

[flow4]

Local authority leasehold properties were generally granted on a 999 year lease. So if it is leasehold, it will be 999 minus however many years have passed since the lease was granted.

With a lease that long, it's not a problem for the mortgage co... And if it's ex-LA, the lease amount is likely to be very small. I am just buying an ex-LA leasehold property, and the ground rent is £4/year!

[2kidsintow]

Flow - the man whose estate the house if for sale from, following his death bought the house from the council a long time ago, so it didn't show up on that site - but thanks for the link to try.

I've had an email back from the County and all they said was to (pay and) try the official land registry as their information might be 'out of date'.

Interesting about the lease length too. :)

[2kidsintow]

Result! £20 saved, for now. Estate agents have replied and confirmed that the property is freehold and was listed incorrectly.

[LandRegistryRep]

2kidsintow - just to flag up to others that to check on the tenure would have cost nothing on the Land Registry website if the property was registered. If it was registered and you then decided to view the register to check the name of the owner for example then it would have cost £3.

£20 would have been a rough figure to get a copy of the lease (if it had been leasehold) OR the cost if you used one of the unofficial websites available through online search engines.

[2kidsintow]

I must've followed the wrong link via google when looking for the land registry then. All I got was a site that gave fixed fees for different searches. It was a definite £19.95 for the search that I would have needed.

Thankfully, the estate agent had the info.