Buying a garage with a 96 year lease

[chickpeaburger]

Is it a problem and what is likely to happen? We're from another part of the UK that doesn't have leaseholds. Our house we've bought here (in London) is freehold but doesn't have a garage. We might be able to buy one with a 96 year lease.

Please let me know what that's all about.

After 96 years you wont own it anymore. Or you can ask to have the lease extended or you can ask how much to buy the leasehold. Either way in 96 years you probably wont be be here so unless you want to leave the garage to your descendents it probably doesn't matter. As the lease gets shorter it will be harder to sell on.

Can anyone help me with what is involved in extending leases. Is it a lot of palaver, is it expensive etc?

I understand the concept of leaseholds (bloody awful outdated system IMO) but have no idea about a purchaser's "rights"

Not sure about garages but for flats or houses you need to have owned the leasehold for 2 years, if there are 81+ years left on the lease you can fairly straightforwardly extend to (for example) 999 years for a fixed amount, ours would have been around £2k- £4K from memory. 80 years or less involves negotiations, surveyors, a whole lot of pita ness and cost us Over £32k. You need a solicitor.

Does anyone know about extending the leasehold of a garage please?

You need to contact the leaseholders or the leaseholders solicitor.

I know that. What I need to know is are we at the mercy of the leaseholder. Can he/she charge whatever they want to extend or is there a limit.

It's the freeholder you would need to deal with. The person paying rent for the garage is the leaseholder.

Not a legal bod.
There should be info in the lease about the way ground rent is charged and any allowed increases over the years.
For a small fee you can download info from the Land Registry which should contain a copy of the lease.
Once you've leased the property for more than 2 years, you can apply to extend the lease. The shorter the lease, the more it costs to extend it.
If you want to buy the freehold, you need to deal directly with the Freeholder.

Thanks. I've signed up and tried to look on Land Registry but it doesn't allow me to select garages. Has anyone managed to do that?

Map search may help you find the garage parcel, but only if it's changed hands relatively recently. The garage may not have been registered.

Is the garage part of the property? So garage at 10 lime tree lane, Storyville? Or is it just in a set of garages that anyone could lease?

Also, just thinking on, if the garage is separate then it may not class as residential in which case you won't have an automatic right to purchase the freehold.

It is possible that the lease for the garage is referred to in the title register for the house if the vendors have been leasing it. If you download the title register you may find it referred to. You can then complete form OC2 and pay the small fee to receive a copy. The Land Registry are really good over the phone if you need any help.

Sorry, maybe the freeholder owns the garage as one of a block.

Thanks all for your advice

I'm not a solicitor but do work in a conveyancing solicitors.

Does the garage belong to another property? If it does, then in order to sell to you, the title would have to be split so that the garage had a separate title number and the seller would need consent from the freeholder.

A lease of 96 years is not really a problem, it's only when the length of the lease falls below 80 years that it would more difficult to obtain a mortgage, the value drops significantly and it would be more difficult to sell on in the future. However, as a garage is not a dwelling, there are no statutory rights to extend the lease so you would be in the freeholder's hands at to their willingness to grant a lease extension and the price they wish to charge for it. Even if the freeholder is agreeable to extend the lease, they would probably base their premium on the value of the garage, and they would most likely charge you a fee for this. You would also be expected to pay their legal fees in relation to the sale to you.

If you are obtaining a mortgage, then there will be fees to pay to the lender too.

The garage 'owner' will have a lease. It will specify the rights and responsibilities of both the leaseholder and the freeholder, including possibly:

Who insures, and who pays for insurance?
Any annual ground rent due and how much?
Who arranges repairs, and who pays?

Read the lease and understand your rights and obligations.

Then, instruct a solicitor to act on your behalf.

Spickle. Thank you so much for all the information you have posted. At last I have a good understanding of what is involved. I think it's perhaps best to not go any further with this after reading about there being no statutory rights in regards to lease extension. Thanks again