Extending lease - anyone done it

[Mumsnut]

We are thinking of buying a property which has only 70 yrs of a 99 yr lease left, so would have to extend it. The freeholder is the National Trust, so I am wondering if the process (which I have read up on a bit) would be extra painful and expensive.

Any ideas?

We extended the lease on our flat. It took a while for the sols to sort out stamp duty etc and to get it registered at the land registry - I think 12 months start to finish BUT we were all friendly and everyone cooperated. I can imagine it being a bit awful if the freeholder was being difficult.

Can you or your solicitor make some enquiries as to whether or not the national trust are likely to be helpful?

Golly, I never thought about stamp duty!! Is it payable on the full value of the flat?

No, its not that bad. We were lucky and extended our lease to 999 years. Ground rent was 60 per year so total nearly 60k. However, there was a proposal to up ground rent to 250 per year so stamp duty would be payable - effectively transaction would be over 25k. Worth thinking about but not actually in practice likely to cause a problem.