Why would our neighbours solicitor need our contact number?

[user1471867483]

My mum owns the freehold of the property next door. She's 82 and has lived in our freehold house for 61 years. The leaseholders next door are moving and they slapped this lpe1 form in our hands to fill in with no solicitor cover letter, nothing. We haven't a clue what to do! I'm currently unemployed and mum being an OAP is on her old age pension. We cannot afford any legal fees. Then they're asking us if it's ok they give mum's contact details to their solicitor and I said of course not, as it's confidential! Why do they want to give out mums number and what can we do in this situation? I read it's not compulsory to fill in the lpe1 form anyway.

It sounds like it was a long term lease and not a tenancy, agreement?

If so, my understanding of the LPE1 form is that it is a quick way to obtain a set of information in a standard format. Things like what the ground rent is, insurance details, fire safety assessments, etc. In other words information held by landlords or managing agents.

It makes the solicitor's job easier. If you don't fill it in, they'll probably just write and ask you anyway, which costs their client more.

P.s. the freeholder details are in the public domain anyway, as the land registry have them.

Your mum is a freeholder of a property and as such there are certain legal obligations. For example, insuring and maintaining the property. Does your mum collect ground rent and maintenance or does your mum employ managing agents? The Solicitors are only doing their job to make sure the property is being properly managed.

My mum doesn't collect anything and only insures her own home. The deeds go back to 1929. The neighbours have also drafted a letter asking us to sign agreements retrospectively when we didn't agree to anything they've done building-wise to their property.
Also, there is no way we can fill this lpe1 form either as we haven't the foggiest about it.

Relatively inexpensively you can download the copies of the Land Registry title, and double check that the neighbours property is leasehold and that your mum is the freeholder.

She would therefore be responsible for completing the LPE1 (which whilst not required legally, most buyers solicitors will not complete without, so if your mum refuses to do it she will thwart the sale and neighbourly relations are unlikely to be good). Often the leaseholders will cover the freeholders costs of completing the LPE1 (incl any reasonable legal fees).

If she hasn’t ever actually collected any ground rent, you’d just answer N/A to everything anyway. I wouldn’t be signing anything they’re backdating, but if it’s just retrospective consent then less of an issue.

Oh my gosh you're so good 👍. Do you know if there's anywhere we can get free conveyancing advice please? Especially as mum's an OAP.
Their other letter states we verbally agreed to their building works which we didn't agree to. In fact, they didn't ask us anything; they told us what they're doing instead! And we just went along with it all!

IANAL, but if they told you and you went a long with it, surely you consented?

I think you’re unlikely to get free legal advice for that sort of thing, but usually like I say you can charge a fee, so contact a few solicitors, explain the situation and see whether they’ll act for your mum and reclaim their costs from the leaseholders on completion of the sale.

Then just say next time they ask that you’ve instructed solicitors to make sure you do it correctly and they’ll contact their solicitors directly (providing you have their solicitors details, if not, ask). But I wouldn’t expect anything before Xmas now!

If your mum is the freeholder for next door then in legal terms she owns it. The neighbours (who are leaseholders) just have an agreement saying they can borrow it for a long period of time. That agreement is the lease.

it’s an unusual situation for your mum to be the freeholder of the house next door to her. Usually it’s either a company or groups of people.

(for example in my son’s flats in London the group of all the leaseholders own the freehold together).

it’s because she owns the freehold that the leaseholders (who are just borrowing it) have to ask permission to do various things. This is a legal requirement.

in the same way, when they want to sell, because they only have an agreement to borrow the house for so many years and your mum actually owns it, the solicitors do ask the actual owner some questions.

At some point your DM (or you) is going to need to get this sorted. Maybe you should consider whether it would be more expedient to sell the freehold to the new purchaser of the leasehold if she has no good reason for owning it.

Gosh, so complex! My mum just let them do what they wanted to keep the peace. But it's this retrospective letter they've written and wanting her to sign. Some of the building work they carried out they didn't inform us about either verbally or in writing - it was just done! If this makes sense. Also, Friday morning they expected her to give up her Saturday (the very next day) to go over all this. There was no notice nothing. That's when I put my foot down and told her to keep them waiting.

Yes, she owns their leasehold and her own freehold. It's in the deeds like mentioned above. It's just we've never had anything like this before.

It’s a bit weird as this would’ve come up on every relatively recent sale of the leasehold, so I’m not sure how this is the first she’s ever heard about it - or why she owns the freehold of next door. Definitely wouldn’t be rushing though, just say it needs to be done properly (also to avoid them having issues if the form is wrong).

Really appreciate your help. She owns the freehold of her own property and the land of her property and the land of their property it sits on. It's the house next door that's joined on that's leasehold alone. This is the first time anything like this had happened as the guy next door lived to his mid 90s. So there's only been one sale next door in mum's 61 years of living here. These current leasehold neighbours moved in 9 years ago and we didn't need to do anything, but now they're selling it.

You can’t really rely on “we’re confused and she’s elderly”
to not act, though. Get legal advice.

As a freeholder she will have certain duties (covenants) to the people who have the lease so she should have a copy of the lease itself outlining these. A freeholder can’t simply ignore the fact that they are legally entangled with the leaseholder as they might be breaching these covenants and this would be legally enforceable

Will do. Chat GPT has been good.

Huh? 🤔

LPE1s are over the top for leasehold houses like that. The solicitor should just be asking a shorter list of questions. That would be less confusing.

This government agency gives free advice
www.lease-advice.org

What I am trying to say is that the LPE1 is the least of your mother worries. It’s requested by the buyers solicitor in a conveyancing process. I would be more concerned that your mother is unaware what the lease contains and so not able to check what her legal obligations are. The lease might say she should be insuring both properties or regularly maintaining the outside of the building- if she hasn’t been doing that the buyers solicitor will flag this up to their client and your mother will be in breach of her freeholder duties which would be the real issue

Wow, really? I'd no idea. The LPE1 form they've given us is about 8-10 pages long! There's just no way ☹️

Shall I ask their solicitor to shorten the form?

You didn't object so id say that was agreement. Why make things difficult?

I guess, but we weren't given any lease copies. Strange, but then all this does go back to the 1960s.