Buying/ Selling and leasehold WWYD?

[herethereeverywhere]

This is the first time I will be selling a property so am hoping for done advice from those wiser than myself

We bought out flat for £150k 2 years ago and have completely renovated it. New kitchen, bathroom and heating system, the lot. We now want to sell and move away to my parents village as we now have a young DS and top floor flat living isnt practical with him anymore. Ideally we would like to move before the end of next summer to get him settled in the area before he starts school the following year.

So the properties we are looking to buy are at around the £150k mark and our current outstanding mortgage is £130k. The thing is we are a leasehold flat and the remaining term on the lease is 72 years which I know drastically affects the selling price.

So my question is based on the leasehold and how much we bought the flat for, the work done - do you think we will be able to sell for more than we bought for? In our area flats are selling for between £150-170k but I don't know what leaseholds they are on.
Secondly as I think as we are not looking to increase our mortgage I would be ok selling the flat for whatever we could get before the leasehold gets even lower. Is this a silly way to think?

Sorry this is long. Any advice appreciated.

You might need to extend the leasehold before you sell as it hard for a futurevbuyervto get a mortgage once it gets below a date. If the flat has been owned by you for 5 years then you have a right to extend lease. You will need to get a cost on this. I think 70 years or so would put off prospective buyers. We had a flat, had to extend leasehold and then sell. It is fairly simple to do though, and you will get a higher price. Good luck

Thanks for the reply - when you extended the leasehold did you have to go through solicitors etc? The only thing making me dread doing that is that we wouldn't get our money back on the flat after doing that plus we would have to borrow the money to extend the leasehold so would be moving and still paying off a debt from a property we no longer live in

Have you had the flat valued by your local estate agents? They'll give you an idea but in most cases I'd suggest extending the lease.

You do that through your solicitor, normally for another 99 years (so you'd have 99 plus 72 years). The leaseholder charges can vary for this kind of thing, we paid 4k to do similar on a flat we owned in London a few years back and the process took about 4-5 months as leaseholder was slow. Build in those timescales to when you want to sell as sale will likely be dependent on completion of the extension. You may be able to add your costs to your mortgage rather than take out as separate loan. Confirm your mortgage is transferable to any new property when you speak to them.

As for your improvements making the flat worth more... You'd hope it would but the market will dictate and the agent will advise what you can realistically hope to achieve.

Good luck, I hate selling property as I find it very stressful but fingers crossed it all goes smoothly for you.

Speak to a couple of estate agents first. In some areas, 72 years would be on the right side of okay and wouldn't be an issue. In other areas you might be better off trying to extend. We were fine selling our London flat with only 78 years on the lease, no problem at all, and around here it's only when it gets much lower that it becomes cash buyers only, but that mightn't be the case everywhere. Shouldn't be too hard to find out.

Mortgage companies are doing everything they can to avoid lending, so being picky about leaseholds is a good excuse for them. My leasehold was around 70ish and we actually bought share of freehold, because the evil landlord was demanding so much for the extension of leasehold. But the estate agents' view on us would be that we wouldn't add value; we would simply make it possible to sell the flat. We had no choice basically.

Under 80 years also involves something called the marriage value which is teh difference between teh value of the property before and after the lease extension. You will also be liable for 50% of that but it is worth doing as otherwise difficult to sell.

Thanks for all the advice. Do you know if it's possible to ask the leaseholder direct for a quote on extending the leasehold? Just to get a rough idea of costs before getting solicitors involved and speaking to the mortgage company? Or would they ignore that ? Our leaseholder is a company rather than an individual if that makes a difference

Thanks for all of the advice it's really appreciated.

Yes, you can approach the freeholder directly to ask for a guide on costs. They may charge an admin fee to tell you though.

Thanks for all of the advice. I rang our freeholder today and they are sending out two quotes to me today. One to extend the lease for 90 years and another to extend it to an additional 26 years. So I will look at those, speak to our solicitor and go from there. Thanks for all of the advice