Extending Your Lease
Once you have owned your property for at least two years you have the right to extend your lease for an additional term of 90 years and have the rent reduced to a peppercorn (meaning you no longer pay any ground rent). The premium to be paid is calculated by a surveyor according to a strict formula which includes the value of the property, length of the current lease, current ground rent. You do not need to actually live in the property to be entitled to extend the lease, you just need to have owned the leasehold interest for over 2 years.
Although there is a legal procedure you can follow to force your landlord to grant a lease extension we would advise that, in order to save costs, you initially contact your landlord on an informal basis to see whether he is prepared to extend the lease and if so whether you can agree terms. If you are able to do this we can carry out the conveyancing (dealing with the paperwork including reviewing the new lease, obtaining the permission of your lender, dealing with completion formalities and registration of the new lease). For a quote for conveyancing only please complete the online lease extension request form.
If you are unable to agree terms with your landlord you will need to serve a formal Notice of Claim (known as a Section 42 Notice) on your landlord pursuant to the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. Your landlord then must reply within two months and then terms will be agreed or the process will put before the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal who will decide on the terms under which the lease extension can be granted. Further details on this procedure.
An important note, however, is that you will need to budget for the landlord’s reasonable costs in investigation of title, valuation and conveyancing for which you will be responsible under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993.
If you have not owned your property for at least the last two years then you will not qualify for a lease extension under the terms of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. However, this does not necessarily mean that you cannot extend the term of your lease.
You will need to approach your landlord on an informal basis to see whether or not your landlord is agreeable to grant you a lease extension and agree the terms of the lease extension with you. If you are able to agree terms on an informal basis we can then deal with the conveyancing for you as mentioned above.
If you would like to discuss any aspects of extending your lease please email us or go back to our contact details