Buying the freehold for a house

[ITriedAnother]

Has anyone gone through the process of buying the freehold for their house? It's a semi detached house so I imagine less complicated than a flat. Do you need a broker or a solicitor? Is it a negotiation process or is there a set fee? The current freehold owner is Goodkind Property Consultants. Thanks.

Hello, I'm a property solicitor and would recommend paying someone (not touting for business) it's worth paying a few hundred ££ to make sure the paperwork is completed properly and it's successfully registered at Land Registry to save you trouble if you're ever selling. You could negotiate the price though yourself and instruct a solicitor once you're happy with the cost agreed

We bought the freehold of two flats (only two in the building) though only one was ours - the owner of the other didn’t want to buy her share.

AFAIK there‘s a formula for working out what you should pay, based around value, length of lease, ground rent. IIRC the freeholder can’t just name their own price.

I’d definitely recommend a specialist solicitor. The one we tried first turned out to be pretty clueless and time was wasted. The specialist was excellent. Ours was a bit complicated, though, because of a supposedly absentee freeholder - he wasn’t, just hiding a few miles away under another name, because of debts attached to the FH!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER hi there, I know this is an old post but would love to hear your experience of buying freehold in a 2 flat converted house. Our freeholder has offered it to us but upstairs won’t buy. Can you tell me a bit about your experience? How do you manage the freehold/repairs etc?

They are actually a pair of purpose built Edwardian maisonettes, one taking up the whole of the upstairs, the other down, with adjacent front doors, so there are no common areas. The owner of downstairs didn’t want to buy her share of the FH - we had to buy the whole. The fact of a supposedly absentee freeholder had caused no end of problems with the purchase - a dd had been going halves with us, but her mortgage offer was withdrawn at the last minute because of that. So we were concerned about problems in future - though of course Mr ‘absent’ freeholder popped up once he realised there would be money in it!

We had to have new leases drawn up (not a major expense) - and set the ground rent for the other flat at not much more than a peppercorn.

The other owner (it’s changed hands since) needs to have their own insurance for parts of the building, but I forget the details.

Apart from within our own maisonette, which has been rented out for over 10 years now, we have had no maintenance issues.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER thanks so much for replying! Do you find it much extra responsibility/admin etc? How did you work out who covers what ie. Roof, communal hallway etc ? Thanks again :)

According to dh, we (since we occupy the whole top floor) are responsible for the roof, and downstairs are responsible for the foundations. Each of us is separately responsible for insurance of the fabric of our own half.

But he emphasised, much will depend on what your particular lease says, so you’d probably need to consult a specialist solicitor. I’d add that the first we tried when buying the property, and asking about buying the FH, was utterly useless! The specialist we later found was v good though.

As I said before though, we have no communal areas to worry about. And no, we haven’t found the admin a bother. When the lower one changed hands there was quite a bit of paperwork and lots of questions from his solicitors, to me as the freeholder, but they didn’t take up too much time.

PS, dh recommends downloading the title deeds /leases from the Land Registry website and reading them carefully - cost £3 each as far we know.