Buying freehold of a house

[Liverbird77]

Me and DH are looking round a house today. We really like it. Through digging around (info not in estate agent's blurb), we have found it is leasehold.
It isn't a new build.
We understand that there is a right to buy freehold after two years of ownership.
Does anyone have any experience of this?
We were thinking either ask them to sort it prior to sale, or taking cost off any offer.
Obviously we have yet to see it, but it looks like a great place.

There's a set process which you can look up. The cost will partly depend on the ground rent. Do you know what that is?

We bought the FH of a maisonette, one of 2, owner of the other didn't want to buy her half so we bought the whole. There was supposedly an absentee freeholder, which had caused all sorts of problems with the purchase, so we wanted to avoid that in future.

There is plenty of info online. There is a formula for working out the cost of the FH - based on ground rent, length of lease, etc - it gets more expensive once it goes below 80 years. It's not a case of the Fholder just asking what they like.

Do use a specialist solicitor! We used a high st one at first, same one who'd handled the purchase, who said he was familiar with the issues, but he was useless, and eventually I changed to a specialist I found via google.

We hadn't owned the property for 2 years before starting the process, we began straight away, but it took well over a year, complicated by the 'absentee' Fholder - he wasn't, just hiding a few miles away under another name, because of debts attached to the FH.

Thanks for your replies. The ground rent is £2 a year! The estate agent didn't know the length if the term, but is finding out for us.

We really liked the house a lot, so we shall see what he says.

Guessing from your username you might be in the NW? Also judging by the ground rent of £2 a yr, I'm guessing it's long leasehold. Pretty standard for the NW. Usually (and you need to check the terms of the lease) they're 999yrs mostly starting in 1920s onwards. The ground rent is usually fixed (so it will never increase) so its completely different to the leasehold issues on newer leasehold property that's been all over the news recently. Depending on how you feel, there is no real benefit to buying the freehold if you're in a long leasehold. You can sometimes be charged a couple of hundred pounds for permission to extend / make structural changes (the lease may state that that you need the freeholders permission) so you'd avoid that if you owned the freehold but generally there's no material benefit (and is unlikely to add any value to the property).

Our house is leasehold. Built in 1906. Ground rent is £1.50 (?!) Leasehold houses are really common where we are (west Yorkshire pennines village) to be honest, we're not concerned about/interested in buying the free hold. Should we be?

Just read the helpful post from a pp. So reverting back to not being interested in buying it. Actually, ours had the loft converted by the previous owners and a couple of the neighbours have extended. We wanted to remove a tree that was blocking light and put up a fence so wrote to them to ask if this was ok. It wasn't a problem and they seemed surprised that we asked. The free hold is owned by a local mill.

Wow, that is very reassuring. The house is in Manchester. Apparently other properties on the street are also leasehold
I would worry it would be off-putting to buyers if we decided to sell eventually, however we defo won't dismiss it out of hand. Thanks so much for your input.

No it definitely won't put most buyers off. I think most of our village is leasehold with the free hold owned by the same family (textile mill) that own ours. I remember when we were buying our house and the solicitor seemed surprised that we were in any way concerned as it's so usual in this area.

OP we're in Manchester too. We've owned 3 properties in & around Manchester, all have been leasehold. It doesn't put buyers off at all as it really is the norm. I would say that 9 out of 10 houses are long leasehold in some areas where the properties are 1920s / 30s /40s builds.

As per previous post, people often assume "leasehold" is one particular category of title, but it's not as simple as that. Leasehold flats are completely different to leasehold houses, and recent leaseholds (say the last 20yrs, particularly last 5-10yrs) are completely different from long leasehold. Just do your research.

Thank you. It is obviously a "thing" round here. The house we are interested in is older, so hopefully it won't be a problem. Merry Christmas!