Landlord/Freeholder nightmare

[Jasper15]

We bought a leasehold flat 15 years ago but the solicitor failed to tell us the lease was low. Anyway last year we started negotiating for an extension with the freeholders drawing out the process as much as they could. Suddenly a threatening letter has arrived concerning 2 doubleglazed windows in the flat which were there before we bought it. We were told we had breached the lease as we had not sought landlord permission for the windows but as we did not live there at the time how could we have done this?
Any help appreciated

I suggest you contact the Leasehold Advisory Service. They have a helpline 020 7832 2500.

We have a leasehold flat which we now rent out. Whilst we were living there we went ahead and put in new windows. It never occurred to us to ask the Freeholders permission, but that could be more down to the nature of our freeholder/leaseholder arrangement.

The Freeholder did say we should have asked permission however we countered that with our lease said we did not need to ask permission for 'improvements' (not sure of the exact wording) and we deemed the windows as exactly that as they were replacing single glazed windows. Do not know whether this would work for you.

Perhaps even more pertinent is why your freeholder is dragging their heels at such and picking this up now. Have you served notice of intention to renew the lease? I just wondered if they are dragging their heels as prices are going up so fast? You can 'fix the price' by serving notice.

It's extremely unlikely to work as most leases specify exactly what parts of a flat "belong" to the leaseholder (so, walls and ceilings to the depth of the plaster but not to include joists or brickwork etc). Windows would not be included in the list although glass may be.

OP: I suspect the freeholders are trying to play hardball with you now that they know you want to extend the lease. Do you have the original sales details that might specify that windows in whatever rooms are double-glazed or even have pictures. I don't really think they could hope to succeed if it could be shown that you didn't own the property when these alterations were done.

You are spot on lalalong legs and justanother question. it is bullying and to see if they can frighten us into parting with more cash.
The things if this is legitimate why are they not giving their terms? For example "The admin fee for this is ??100 etc But they are hoping to get more aren't they.
Yes we think there is something in our purchase papers re this- maintenance accounts possibly. On further analysis we think it may have actually been the previous landlords that put them in all the flats.
We found out from the Leasehold Advisory service that these matters are timebarred - 12 years (I thought this might be useful for yourselves to know this ) so they obviously did not have Legal advice before they wrote this horrible letter. I will keep you posted. Thanks

I didn't know that they were timebarred, thank you for mentioning that. Is your freeholder an individual or an institution? If the former, they may not know the process and are just hoping to ratchet some money out of you without having to do much. If they are an institution, they may be hoping that if they keep delaying, your lease might drop below the magic 80 years mark and therefore they will be able to charge significantly more to extend. Generally, though, freeholders just want to get on with it and get some money. It may be an idea to get a company to take charge of the process for you as they will be more persistent and understand what to do with unresponsive freeholders. There are lots if you google "buying share of freehold".

We already have a solicitor dealing with this and it is a big institution so I am suspicious as to why the did not write to her instead of us? They have tried every trick in the book to delay things. Also another flat has just started negotiating and they are going to have to pay significantly more than us so basically the landlords have got wind of this and are trying to get more from us as well.
But if the work was done more than 12 years ago their claim fails

I am not sure how they are getting away with delays. If you serve notice of intent to purchase this freezes the countdown on the lease and the freeholders have a specified time to respond. If they don't you can make an offer and if they don't counter offer in a specified time frame your offer stands. I am a freeholder and just extended the lease on one of the flats in the building. The purchaser titted about and we had the right to start the clock again. We.didn't. The system is brutal enough.

They have done all they can to delay things. They only agreed on our offer days before it would have ended up in a Tribunal so the very last minute.
Further enquiries now point to the fact that these windows were probably put in by the Freeholders themselves! These landlords are new ones and so I can only think that they were unaware of what the previous landlords had done BUT a surveyor was used last year and so they had his report???
A year ago.
A man who was doing some work at the block last month told us he had
personally put in windows in a job lot 17-20 years ago! So even the lady who owned the flat before did not put them in.

Thank you all. This is now with our solicitor.It appears the windows were put in by the previous freeholders employees and the maintenance accounts show this so that is that really.
Crazy. This explains why their letters have not included their terms eg ad fee etc because one isnot payable !!