Short Leases

[BackforGood]

My ds is looking for his first property and thought he'd seen something he could afford. When I had a look, the lease only has 48 years to run.

Now, it is 35 years since I was in his position, but I seem to remember that a mortgage lender won't lend under X year on the lease ? (can't remember how many).

If it matters, it is a maisonette - like a semi detached house but built as 4 maisonettes, so not a big block.

Can anyone help us know how bad a buy this would be, and why.
Or how he could find out about buying the freehold or getting the lease extened etc etc ? Is it really a "don't touch with a bargepole" or is it something that is realistically redeemable ?

Thanks

God, sorry for typos!!!

www.lease-advice.org/

Is an excellent resource.

@Ratched

I am selling my dads flat with 34 yeeras left on lease. The lease can only be extended by the current owner, who has to have been in situ for two years. I advertised it as extendable at the buyers expense, but, ultimately sold it way below value as it needed a considerable amount of work done. BUT, WHAT I DID LEARN: we applied for an extension to lease. We needed to pay £160 for them to provide us with a figure, but we bit the bullet and did so. We were quoted 24k I then researched ad nauseum. Replied to them asking them to reconsider, quoting a Government sponsored website calculator ( will post a link in a mo), and using all the keywords. They replied a week late saying okay, how about 11.5k then??? Con merchants the lot of them!

As it happens, we sold to a buy to let investor who was not othered about length of lease.

Not really con artists. You were negotiating an informal lease extension. That means they could have asked for any figure and you negotiate from there. They also could have offered a lower price for the extension but upped the ground rent payable. Its all informal and whatever you and the freeholder can agree on.

If you had gone down the statutory route (you have to of owned 2 years for this) it is a set formulation for a 90 year extension and the ground rent reverts to zero.