Extending the lease on a property

[LemonSqueezy0]

Does anyone have any experience of this, or advice please.

For various reasons it has gone under the 80 years, and there was nothing I could do about that. Bit gutting but there you go... Luckily I am now in a position to extend the lease and sell.

However, the company that own the lease are terrible at getting back to me, and only when pushed have given me a quote.

I have funds to pay for a solicitor, but also feel confident enough to go to a tribunal but wondered if anyone had been through similar and had any pearls of wisdom please

Happy to give more details, if necessary but that's the gist of it...

You need to find a good local solicitor qualified in lease extensions.
They will handle everything with the freeholder’s solicitor.

The freeholder is entitled to a survey to work out the “marriage value” ie how much the remaining lead is worth. This goes up depending on property value and as the lease gets shorter - ours went up over £6k in a couple of years so it is worth trying to get your extension ASAP.

Sorry I wasn’t clear - my experience is that I had a freeholder who was apparently quite happy to extend the lease for a reasonable sum but stalled and stalled.
We had to resort to a solicitor to resolve it and it ended up costing c£30k when initially the guy had indicated he’d accept £10k. Flat valued at £240k, but less than 70 years left on lease.

Thank you - they've given me a quote of £18k but say that's to take it back up to 99 years, so around 20 years. The flat is worth about £190,000..It's taking weeks to get replies to emails and I think a solicitor is my only option tbh.

Read this - subject to all the qualifying obligations, you have a right to add 90 years to the lease. The website is very useful, it explains the process well with details of timescales in which the landlord has to reply etc.

www.lease-advice.org/faq/how-long-can-i-extend-my-lease-for/

Sorry should have said "add 90 yrs to what's left of the lease" if that wasn't clear!

Yes, definitely get a solicitor. You need to know whether that a competitive rate. Ours was extended by 90 years and the ground rent was reduced to zero, as per the website linked to above. £18k for 20 years seems quite a lot, and doesn’t add the value for resale, although there is an automatic right to extend for minimal fee if there is 81 years + left and you’ve lived in the property for 2 years.

Does anyone know how much it would cost to extend an 88 year lease? Flat cost £405K to buy, but has now been valued at £390K due to the falling market.

Would love to hear anyone's experiences.