thinking of moving to a bigger house, its a repo so dirt cheap, the only down side is that its on leasehold land not freehold, is it really that bad, some are saying dont buy lease hold others saying do it.
house is ten years old, lease hold has 90 years left. you guys any history with leasehold????

it’s always more difficult to sell a leasehold property, but buying one you o get more for your money.
Whilst your evil legal type is doing all their stuff on the purchase, get them to look into buying out the lease…

In sheffield a large percentage of houses are leasehold – so it’s pretty normal and doesn’t affect sales. That maybe a fairly local condition, though.

Or see if you can get the lease increased. I’m sure I bought a flat once which had 997 years left to run.

How much is the lease hold payment per year ?
What happens if they increase considerably?
90 Years doesnt seem that long tbh. Does that mean the house will get harder and harder to sell as it gets closer to the end?

We bought the leasehold on our house when we moved in. They are a rip off of the highest order imo

our leaseholder wanted c£1400 to sell, ground rent of c£15pa. we left it at that.

if it’s a problem at time of sale, we may reconsider. didn’t affect our purchase at all though.

it doesn’t make that much difference when you’re actually there, the things you need to be aware of are the service charge payments, ie. how much you’re required to pay each year for common parts/freehold maintenance and the fact that 90 years is on the short side for anyone buying it off you down the line, and the likelihood of their getting mortgage finance to buy it, so you might have issues selling it on.

all depends on the circumstances really
where it is, the availability of freeholds in the area, the annual costs, the length left on the lease (I don’t think yours is bad at all and shouldn’t stop you getting a mortgage)

our ground rent is about £15pa, service charge about £400pa – council is the freeholder, hard to get freehold on a 1-bed flat in my locality – property is grade 2 listed and in a conservation area so I don’t mind the freeholder stumping up for maintenance and repairs!

being leasehold isn’t a problem at all. The only thing to bear in mind is that sometimes you need to get consent from the landlords if you want to extend the property.

we had a leasehold flat – tends to be the case more often than not on flats our way. We had it extended to 99 years from 60 odd and it cost about £2k to do so. No problems selling.

As above said – it’ll affect what you can do with the property and land though. Worth bearing in mind if you’re going to be there for a while…

I can see far fewer problems with a leasehold house than a flat.

90 years is perfectly OK, the big change happens at 80 years when you start getting into marriage values if you then wish to extend the lease.
You have a legal right to extend the lease by 90 years and doing this before it drops below 80 years will be considerably cheaper.

agreed that 90 isn’t a prob, but say you sell it 5 years down the line, the next person will view 85 as getting closer to 80 and may find the remaining lease offputting. anything under 100 is getting close to borderline for reselling.

I think there is some legal criteria which means you can force the owner to sell the leasehold to you, rather than just extend it. You might have to live there for a set period of time first. Ask at citizens advice or just root round the web for more info.

Some of the leasholders I have known seem to have had odd restrictions on like the colour of paint they can use, or not being able to convert the downstairs garage into any kind of room.

my parents have been trying to buy out their lease for years. The landlord just ignores any correspondance.

I had a lease hold masonette for almost 10 years, yearly charges werent too much and selling it (with around 80-90 years left) wasnt a problem but that was a 3 years ago when it was a sellers market.
However it was the small print that pissed me off, the landlord (council) had to maintain the structure and the ground rent didnt cover that so every 4 years (ish) they would contract out some work and send us the bill, we argued our way out of the first big jobs, being able to do most of it ourselves but it caused them hassle so afterwards they made it compulsory for the work to be carried out. sold before they were going to re-render the outside walls thank god.

It puts me off. We looked at a couple of leasehold properties but went for a freehold in the end. It would bother me that I’ve just spent £000s on something but still need to ask someones permission to do stuff to it.

The stories above are why i wouldnt consider a leasehold house. We were offered our house with and without freehold. I think the freehold at the time was £700. We have lived here 8yrs and our neighbours have paid £70 per annum since. I think it went up a year or so ago. Not only is it false economy, you are beholden to someone else and if they choose to charge an extortionate fee you havent got much you can do about it.

Leasehold on houses doesnt make any sense to me.

It’s pretty normal around here with houses. £5 a year (if they ever ask for it)…You are supposed to inform them of certain work (probably extensions) but I’ve not heard of it being a problem for anyone here. I guess that it makes very little difference to anyone already in the area as they know that it is the case for most local properties…perhaps it would disuade a few new to the area.

…although my lease runs for a hundreds of years