flying freehold - any thoughts?

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Does anyone have any experience of living with a Flying Freehold? Good, bad or indifferent - Any experiences or thoughts welcome.

I don't have experience of living with a flying freehold, but we did look at several properties with one, once upon a time. You probably know all this already, but flying freeholds can devalue property because they mean you might have to access someone else's property/ land to do essential maintenance. Basically, if you don't have a co-operative neighbour you might be in trouble.

It is normal for some sort of legal agreement to be drawn up between the two parties invovled, but I think you have to be dead careful that the agreement would carry forward should either property be sold. Otherwise, I think you can take out insurance to cover potential problems.

Flying freeholds can cause problems with obtaining a mortgage as well, if I remember correctly....

hmm FF can be a nuisance. If you love the house enough fine, if not FF can be a nightmare

We have one, several houses in our street have them and no problems that I have come across (lived here 9 years), but all the neighbours are pretty cooperative here. You would need to get your solicitor to go through the deeds very carefully, our mortgage company wanted us to take out an indemnity policy but our solicitor insisted that this was not enough and that the deeds be re-written to give us all the most up to date legal protection. The next door neighbour also had to sign up to the revised deeds.

MD, where are you from? FF is more common on the continent

I think we had one in our old house. Terraced house with a shared passageway inbetween the houses, above the passageway at the front was their bedroom, at the back it was our bedroom. Is that the right thing?

Nothing was mentioned about it when I bought the house. When I sold it 5 years later there was much teeth nashing by the solicitor and I had to pay an extra £150 to have some stupid document drawn up saying that it had never been a problem and both me and my neighbour were allowed access.

And I would say that 95% of the terraced houses in my city have this arrangement. My dad's house is like this.

the North SS?

More north than south. But not too far north.

Thanks for the replies. There is a written legal agreement regarding access (not seen it yet).

I'm in Hampshire. Ours is a Victorian terrace, downstairs houses are normal, ie rectangular shape, upstairs we have two beds at the front and one at the back, next door is the other way round. Therefore one of our bedrooms extends over next door's hall, and one of theirs extends over our back room. I know of one other street in my town with them. A builder I know says the arrangement over central passageways is common (prob in W.Mids where he is from), and it is because the archway could not support a wall over the middle of it, so the upstairs walls are over the side walls of the archway. IYSWIM.

MrsD - do you have any written agreemnent with your neighbours? If so, is it between you and them as owners or something you inherit with the properties (does that make sense?)

It's all in our deeds (this part is called a Mutual Deed of Support), and hence on our Land Registry entry, my solicitor re-wrote them, our next door neighbour agreed to sign them (it does give them protection too) and it covers the flying freehold, plus things like water and gas pipes that might pass under each other's property.

The deeds state that the rights will pass to successive owners of both properties, so this should cover either of us if we wish to sell. My solicitor said that this was the reason why the indemnity policy was not as good, because it did not ensure future owners' rights.

It cost about £300 and this was 9 years ago but is too important to overlook. I would describe the situation exactly to your solicitor and ask them to look at the existing deeds, you never know it might already be there like ours is now.

It covers all the access rights too, various of us have rights of way over different passageways, etc.

Thanks MrsD - That is really helpful. I will check out what is in place, and if we need anything in addition to what is in the deeds with our solicitor.

unavailible why do you not trust your solicitor?

I do trust our solicitor, I just have no experience of FFreehold and wanted to know what possible pitfalls etc there may be, and how to avoid them. Am trying to make an informed choice.

just that your solicitor should be helping you with all this. Wondered why he/she wasn't