We have to make a decision and I’m just wondering if others have bought leasehold properties and what their experience of them is? This is not a very old/ new build property - just a bog standard 1960s three bed semi.
Context: we live in a small, very desirable school catchment area where houses don’t seem to come up that often! When we bought our current house, there really wasn’t any other option in this area and although it’s a really beautiful house (tiny Victorian town house) it’s also small and there’s no drive which isn’t ideal. One of our children is in the school now, one more to go so we really don’t want to move areas. A couple of months ago, a dull but practical semi came up for sale just round the corner and we put in the highest bid for it - we were very pleased! We asked straight away if it was Freehold and we’re assured it was. We’d like to do it up over time but it offers us more space and the right area. Ours had an offer within days too from a lovely couple hoping to move ASAP. They have a child applying for school (deadline mid January) and really wan our house. They offered a low amount, not the asking price but the bare minimum we’d need to move to other house so we just agreed for the speed! We knew everyone was up for a quick move.
No we’ve just had the searches back and they’re showing that the house is in fact Leasehold - we’re really frustrated that we were lied to. The vendor says the freehold is owned by a lady who owns the whole street and won’t sell, she’s apparently very stubborn on the issue. They’ve offered to lower to price by 10k if we continue and we all complete at Christmas. It’s a 500k house so as a percentage isn’t really a big drop, not that we were hoping for a drop at all really, we’d rather pay the full price and have a freehold tenure.
We are awaiting a copy of the lease to read but really put off it now. Do not want to let our buyers down at all and there’s nothing in the catchment to even rent, bar a few very very tiny flats we couldn’t make work.
Can anyone tell me their experiences of leaseholds? We are minded to pull out at this stage and really don’t want to.
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.
Property/DIY
What would you do? Leasehold
77 replies
Amerimoon · 22/11/2020 12:08
OP posts:
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.