-
Yes, but that's not the concern just the context. The real issue is that there's not been a maintenance agreement in place, and no maintenance has been done for ~20 years.
If there's no maintenance agreement in place how do I and the lender have confidence that necessary maintenance will be organised?
neu-
It is possible to do stuff ‘informally’ as and when. Requires owners to be on it.
But it sounds like nobody has been on it, so you’ll be inheriting 20 years of neglect.
-
The same will apply to some extent whatever shared property you buy. I don't think formal maintenance arrangements are common unless you have a proper coprorate freeholder, and that's it's own bag of problems.
Are there specific maintenance issues that concern you?
-
You'll find a lot of smaller properties with flats (e.g. houses split into 2 or 3 flats) won't have separate formal maintenance agreements. My previous flat didn't and it wasn't an issue for me buying it or the people buying it off me.
It is reasonably likely that the leases will contain some mechanism to ensure that the flats are maintained so that would be the obvious place to start. Obviously just because it's in a lease doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to spend the cash.
Howard
grams
aggi
Unless there's something very weird going on, all three flats will be the same leasehold tenure. The two people who own two of the flats also coincidentally own half of the freehold each. Presumably they'd sell you that share at the same time they sell you their flat, but they don't have to.
You'd agree what maintenance needs doing with the other freeholder and then send a third of the bill to the other leaseholder. This isn't terribly different to if all three of you were freeholders.