Hi - and I am so sorry that you are currently 'stressed'

The roof and loft area are obviously seen as 'common parts' in the property that you are looking at and as such the repairs and renewal costs should be covered in the terms of your lease.

Logically, the ground floor flats are in a similar situation in that they do not have control over the area above their home - although in that case the area above is another flat, rather than the loft.

There are two main considerations. The first is the survey - did the property value at the price you are paying and did the surveyor confirm the property is marketable. The second is your legal firm - are they happy with the terms of the lease. It is certainly worth talking through your concerns with them. If all answers are positive, then you should certainly be able to re-sell the property. The only thing you have to decide is do you like the flat - and are you happy to proceed withouth the extra space you thought you would have in the loft.

An option to explore may be to ask the freeholder if they would consider selling the loft space to you at a later date, once the sale of the flat has gone through, if you feel it would add to the property.

Good luck with everything and we would really like to know how you get on.

Louise

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Louise Cuming

Hi, please help! I'm in the process of buying a top floor flat in London. We were told by the estate agents and the owners that in buying this leasehold flat we would own the loft. We instructed our solicitors to process this sale and in doing so they have found out that the loft is not included in the lease so in buying this flat we would not own the loft.

Is this normal that in buying a top floor leasehold flat you never own the loft, or is this unusual. We are really worried as if we go ahead with the sale, will us not owning the loft cause us trouble when we go to sell the flat?

In order for us to own the loft we need to get the freeholder to get the deeds from the bank, and appoint a solicitor to get the deeds changed, apparently this process can take months, and the owner is threatening to put the flat back on the market if we are adamant we want to own the loft. This is because she has been advised it will take 2-3 months to change the deeds/lease so this will mean that she will lose out on the property she wants to buy.

Any advice gratefully received, please help :)