Ashley Wilson - Lease Extensions

Lease Extensions

With years of experience acting for both flat owners and landlords our partner led offer will help you understand and navigate this and related rights in a straightforward and cost-effective way. Our experience and industry relationships mean that we can offer a fixed price service covering all the legal and valuation advice you need.

Document Downloads

Lease Extension Flowchart

Lease Extension Process

Complex Matters Overview

Tribunal & Court Proceedings

Extending your lease not only prevents the risk of your flat ownership from returning to the freeholder but also increases its value, enabling a much swifter sale or remortgage process to take place. If you own a flat, with every day that passes the length of your lease will become shorter and the value of your flat will diminish.

We advise clients on a range of aspects relating to lease extensions, including extension of your lease via a statutory lease extension conducted under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 or an informal lease extension basis, negotiated privately with your landlord of freeholder.

Statutory Lease Extensions

Under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you have the right to extend your lease from the Freeholder. The statutory right to extend your lease begins after two years of ownership but you may also take the benefit of a lease extension from your seller if you are buying a short lease. Once your lease reaches 80 years the premium payable will start to increase exponentially whereby when your lease reaches 85 years you should consider extending it to avoid incurring high premiums and avoid issues which could prevent a sale. The sooner your lease is extended, the lower the premium.

Informal Lease Extensions

Informal lease extensions are negotiated privately with your landlord or freeholder. This can be a complex procedure and one which may open you up to significant costs if you are not in possession of all the facts relating to your rights. You may wish to extend your lease on an informal, negotiated basis but supported by the knowledge and expertise provided by Ashley Wilson we can ensure that your Freeholder extends your lease on both favourable and equitable terms.

Accreditation & Pricing

As members of ALEP, the Association of Leasehold Practitioners, we are able to provide expert legal advice that helps you achieve your objectives while extending your lease. We offer transparency in respect of all our costs and we always provide a full quotation at the outset of your case. In the majority of cases we can provide a quotation for a lease extension on a fixed fee basis.

We have created a solution to make the process of extending a flat’s lease as straight forward and cost effective as possible where the premium is likely to be moderate and there are no complicating factors.

To ensure peace of mind we provide the advice flat owners need in one place for a fixed overall fee. We arrange the valuation to save time and effort with our trusted partners who will advise you of the premium payable for a new longer lease and subsequently deal with all of the negotiations on your behalf. We undertake the end-to-end legal process and related conveyancing.

The fee for this service is £3,500 plus VAT and disbursements (payments you must make to third parties that we help organise for you such as Land Registry fees to obtain copy documents, for example your title and lease, and to register your claim notice and the new lease & stamp duty where applicable). It does not apply where the premium is likely to exceed £40,000.00 or to Complex Matters outside the fixed fee offer. Should Tribunal or Court Proceedings be required, these costs fall outside of the fixed fee offer details of which can be found here.

To proceed Click here. As a first step we will undertake a conflict check to ensure that we can act for you and confirm whether this service is available to you. This may take 2 or 3 days. Details of the process are set out here.

Miscellaneous

Legal Advice Only

If you have engaged a valuer already that is fine too. Our fixed fee service is still available with a discount of £750.00 to reflect the exclusion of Valuation advice.

Selling your flat with the benefit of a lease extension claim

We can support you by dealing with the conveyancing and as part of that arranging for the lease extension process to be commenced for the benefit of the buyer on terms that protect you.

Other Services

We can also support you in the acquisition of the freehold to your block or its management (known as the right to manage). This includes dealing with right of first refusal (Section 5) notices.

Premium

Your valuer will advise you of the premium payable for a new lease. If you would like an idea of the premium at this stage there are online calculators such as www.lease-advice.org/calculator. We cannot vouch for their accuracy.

Our Lease Extensions Specialists

Mark Vinall

Nathan Woods

Get In Touch

Legal Updates

Right to Manage in an Estate Situation – Who has control of areas shared with other buildings?

The right to manage (RTM) enables leaseholders of residential flats to take control of management of their building via an RTM company that they are members of so replacing the landlord or other third party appointed in the lease in this regard.

Significant Changes for Landlords and Tenants being Introduced by Renters (Reform) Bill

A new Bill which will fundamentally change the way renting residential property in the UK works is currently going through its second reading in the House of Commons.

If enacted, Assured Shorthold Tenancies will be scrapped and all new tenancies will be Assured Periodic Tenancies. The Section 21 ”No fault” process for recovering possession will no longer exist and so landlords will only be able to recover possession by using the existing Section 8 procedure and proving their ground for recovery of possession. It is proposed that new grounds for recovery of possession will be added including where the landlord wishes to sell the property.

Our costs and service information – Residential Conveyancing

Ashley Wilson’s residential conveyancing team combines years of experience and specialist lease extension and enfranchisement expertise to be able to provide you with all the legal support you need, e.g. buying, selling, mortgaging and extending a lease.