Anyone bought their Freehold?

[LivingDeadGirlUK]

I have recently moved to a leasehold house, it was always in the back of my mind to try and buy the Freehold but I've just had a letter through from the management company asking if we would like to do this. The figure they have quoted seems reasonable.

They sent a form and asked us to complete and send a cheque for the money along with the completed form.

The bit that is confusing me is there is a section on the form that asks if we are appointing a solicitor to deal with this. Is this something we should do or will it just be a straight transaction with them taking payment and us receiving the Freehold?

Any advice much appreciated :)

We have bought a freehold, but it was for 2 flats, of which we owned one, and was complicated because of a supposedly absentee freeholder (he wasn't, just hiding under another name because of debts attached to the FH.). We certainly needed a solicitor for that.

I don't want to be alarmist, but I def. wouldn't send any money straight off, just in case it's a scam. Not that I've heard of this type of scam, but nothing would surprise me. So yes, I think I'd definitely consult a solicitor, pref. one you know, to make 100% sure it's all on the level before handing any money over.
You can usually have an initial consultation of 15 minutes or so, for free before going ahead.

Solicitor. It's a straightforward thing from a legal point of view but not something I'd recommend a member of the public doing.

I'm not sure where the "free 15 minutes" comes from though . Anyone local to you who does conveyancing should be able to give you a quote for the work.

Ours is taking over a year to process. Mainly the solicitors seem to be doing fuck-all. But we didn't want to press too hard in case the price was upped or what not.

I mentioned the free 15 mins since that's what we were offered by the sol. who handled our complicated FH purchase.

He was a specialist - we had tried a random sol. from the high st first but he proved to be useless.
Given a straightforward transaction maybe the initial 15 mins would not be offered or needed.

However I still think the OP needs to be wary in case it's a scam. 'Just fill in this form and send a cheque' - it'd be easy enough to fake a letterhead and send that out.

I have checked its not a scam :)

It’s worth doing and yes, you should appoint a solicitor to look over the documents and advise if necessary. We bought the freehold of a flat and it was straightforward. Everyone (5 flats) bought the freehold together and the LL offered it to all of us. We now manage the communal areas etc. It’s worked out well.

Might be worth trying to negotiate the price down a bit - they obviously want to sell.

Used to live in a leasehold house, still can't believe we managed to sell it. Go down the enfranchisement route if you can. If you're on Facebook there is an excellent group called the National Leasehold Scandal or something like that, the lady who runs it is called Katie Kendrick - she is amazing.