Hi all,
I would like to buy the freehold of my house but I have no idea who the landlord is. The rent has never been collected in the 7 years I have lived here & the previous owners never paid anything either. I know that the lease is for 999 years from 1936.
I currently have my house up for sale & I am worried that buyers will be put off buying a leasehold property.
Please can someone advise me how to go about buying this freehold or give me some idea where I can find this information. Also how much would it cost? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Lisa

Hi --- To find the landlord you can make a search of your property for a small fee of £3 at HM Land registry, below.

 http://www.landregisteronline.gov.uk/

Once you know who owns the freehold you have the right to buy out the lease, on condition you have lived there for two years, the article below outlines other details when buying the freehold of a house, including how to go about negotiating with the landlord.

http://england.shelter.org.uk/advice/advice-2923.cfm

PS -- You may have to copy & paste the above link into your browser, for some reason it does not always seem to work when you click it. ???

Hi Starsky - does your property have a HIP?
 
All HIPs have in them information about the tenure of the property from the land registry assuming its registered with them.  The HIP also has leasehold documents. 

 

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Happy to help.

Hi Starsky,

I may just add that a lease for that period of time rarely causes concern for buyers. Most leases have just 99 years and below and these are quite acceptable for most potential purchasers. I wouldn't let the fact that you can not find the freeholder put you off.

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Regards

Ian

Thanks for your replies to my post & the links they have been very helpful. Would the info about the landlord be in my 'underlease'? I am in the process of having my HIP put together & they have asked me who the landlord is & to send my lease. I'm not really sure what this is as there is so much paperwork with my deeds. I have sent the 'underlease' hoping this is the right document.

I think that it has been so long since the rent has been collected that maybe the landlord has died???

Thanks again for your help,

Lisa  

I have already replied to the point about buying the freehold when you can't find the freeholder here:

Moderator - Link to user forum removed, in line with MS terms of service.

I assume that you have already been down the Land Registry route. If the Land Registry does give information about the freehold then obviously this should be followed up, but the normal difficulty is that the freehold title is not registered. Depending on where it is in the country compulsory registration of title might well not have applied when the freeholder bought the freehold. That is the normal problem with these missing freeholder situations.

As far as the HIP is concerned, this is the kind of case that is going to confuse a HIP company, but a local solicitor with knowledge of the area would probably have met the issue before and would deal with it in a common sense way. This just reinforces the point about finding a good conveyancing solcitor and getting him to arrange the HIP.

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients