Buying freehold

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I have bought a two bedroom ground floor flat 4 years ago it is a converted house with one other flat upstairs. I purchased it knowing that it has an absent freeholder but now I am looking into buying the freehold ,I know this can be very complicated but would like to do as much as poss on my own to keep costs down before I involve a solicitor, has anyone done this and as the freeholder isn't on land registry documents I was wondering if someone could advice me on where to start searching

Call round some local solicitors for quotes. You may find that the work you are thinking of doing yourself will be difficult and time consuming for you but won’t make much difference to the cost. Find a solicitor that offers a fixed fee, quoted upfront, then you won’t pay extra if it turns out to be a tricky job.

You really need a specialist property solicitor for this. AFAIK you'd have to get your neighbour on board too, you need 51% of leaseholders to be up for it and as there are only two of you, it'd have to be both.

You need to find the freeholder. It's impossible without.

The solicitor may help you to find the freeholder and may not charge for doing so - it’s worth asking. If you want try to find the freeholder yourself, start with the name on your lease and work your way from there. You only need the other leaseholder on board if you want to force the freeholder to sell. The freeholder may be happy to sell to you in which case you won’t need to force it.

I'm a solicitor. The most my firm would allow me to do free of charge is advise you to check the Land Registry records.

It’s not impossible without finding the freeholder as PP has advised 🙄 not sure why people give apparently authoritative advice when they don’t actually know,

OP, there’s a missing landlord procedure under the 1993 Act. You need a judge to grant you a vesting order. But you do need a specialist solicitor I’m afraid, especially if the freehold is unregistered.

It will be an upfront cost but you can argue that it should be deducted from the price you pay for the freehold, so should be cost neutral in the end.

HTH