Freehold question - finding out how much to buy ours.

[Parisbanana]

We currently live in a house which is split into 2 flats. We own our flat, as leaseholders, as does the occupant of the other flat. The freehold is owned by a different person (non-resident)
As a leaseholder we are entitled to buy the freehold off the current freeholder. But we have no idea how much it would cost. We don't want to approach the current freeholder without any idea as he is a businessman, and his business is property, therefore he will be out to make as much as he can from the deal. We want to pay a fair price.
So how do you find out how much the freehold is?
Thanks in advance

I really don't know . We recently gave our neighbour the leasehold to his house when we sold ours iyswim. He paid for all legal costs which came to about £500. His ground rent was only £6 a year which we had never bothered to collect.

How long is the lease? Will owning it add much value to your flat ? You could try asking an estate agent the difference in value if freehold and then offer perhaps half that amount to the leasehold owner? Sorry not much help

Are you and other leaseholder doing this collectively? If its just you on your own I'm not sure you are eligible? LEASE, the leasehold advisory service, can give you an estimate, but my experience suggests it is fairly inaccurate. It gives you a calculator but the only way to check is to use a proper surveyor. All this obv costs money, so making an informal inquiry first could test the water. How long is your lease?

Thanks for your replies.
At the moment we are just thinking about it as we find it a hassle and inconvenient to contact the freeholder when certain things need attending to. Also we have to go with the building insurance he chooses, pay a "management fee" , ground rent. it would, i'm fairly certain add value to our property. The other leaseholder would be interested in sharing if the cost wasn't too high.
The leases are well over 100 years.

We looked into doing this but we were advised to extend the lease by 90 years. The ground rent is now 'a peppercorn' (£5 a year), the service charge, sinking fund and insurances are about a third less than just an insurance policy would be taken out myself so I am happy to be leasehold for now. We are hoping to buy downstairs one day and will worry about the freehold then

We found this website realy useful when going through freehold purchase which eventually fell through when other leaseholder dropped out:

www.leaseholdadvicecentre.co.uk/Collective%20Enfranchisement.htm

I think the website details the complex formula for calculating the cost of freehold purchase.

Your leases are long so one would think the cost will be at the lower end.

You will have to pay all of your own plus all of your freeholder's legal costs.

I suspect with your long leases there will be little increase in the vlaue between selling your property as Share of Freehold or as Leasehold - which is good for you, because the lower the increase in value - the less you have to compensate the freeholder for losing.