Extending a Lease?

[Octoposse]

Idiot's guide please!

My wife has found a nice town centre flat to buy for her parents - it's a nice location, pleasant one bedroom flat, balcony, view over the park. The sellers will accept £79k.

BUT the lease has only 68 years to run, and seller's Estate Agents won't comment on possibility of extending, etc.

Before we start spending money on Solicitors, any rules of thumb or stuff we should know?

Thanks . . .

[Zeemax_Mini]

http://www.findaproperty.com/displaystory.aspx?edi...

Dom

[Engineer1]

IANAL but we are in the process of extending our lease. In order to have a right to extend the lease you must own the property for 2 years. The Lease owner will offer you some fking stupid price initially don't accept that, also don't take any offer to pay less but have a ground rent that doubles every 10 years, first 10 years @ £100, 11 to 20 @ £200, ok but by 71-80 £12800, 81 to 90 £25600, and by the end of the extended lease at 160 years £3276800. You may think I'm daft saying that but the guy sorting our lease has seen and heard of people accepting a doubling ground rent as they save a couple of grand on the lease extension.

[andye30m3]

It might be worth having a read through this site http://www.lease-advice.org/