Owning your own home

I viewed a place yesterday that I like, but there's a weird freehold arrangement.

Ground floor flat in Brighton with one flat below, one above. The freehold is split 50-50 between the ground and first floor flats. The LG flat is rented with an absentee landlord. There's no maintenance arrangement in place and the building hasn't had work for years (not confirmed yet, but likely 20+ years).

I can make an offer subject to survey but if the survey says thousands needs spending, then that's potentially a massive issue right? The person upstairs is an elderly women who's lived there for 25+ years, presumably without paying anything towards maintenance (to be confirmed).

I know this is all surveyor/solicitor advice, but I'm wondering how to frame my negotiation, if at all.

Sounds like more hassle than its worth.

Yes but I can't find anywhere decent for my budget, and this place ticks almost all the other boxes.

We need to extend our lease on our flat in Hackney, any recommendations on firms that specialise in lease extensions which don't charge a small fortune?

Edit: The freeholder is Hackney Council. Also well within the threshold with a current lease of 93 years.

Unless the hassle and inevitable expenditure is priced in then run, run fucking run

Basically what im saying in a better way.

Our place ended up like that because 2 of the 5 leaseholders weren’t interested when we bought out the freehold.

Pain in the arse when it comes to getting building maintenance done, but I bet any arrangement is a pain in one way or another.

I like the strange layout of it - downstairs bedrooms and kitchen and upstairs living room. I guess it's because of the level of the land and garden around it.

Does it work in real life or is it something to tolerate?

Bit of both, the sitting room works well, with the doors to the garden, but some of the downstairs is a little odd, like the 2nd front door, round the side by the tarmac drive.

That sounds similar to how my last place was set up. No sinking fund and costs split between both parties on an ad-hoc basis as required. To be fair it only really worked because the upstairs landlord was quite reasonable and happy to cough up half of what ever needed doing, and the only major work was ever replacing some calling stones to a parapet and repainting the back of the property (which I did). If they were the don't spend anything type it could have turned in to a real ball ache.

That was meant to be @neu

indeed lol

How long do you think you will be able to extend the lease for?

I'm back to looking at flats and the 50/50 split with one flat above/below, as is there case here, looks to me way better than paying 120 p/month in service charge fees on something like this

Yes but I can't find anywhere decent for my budget, and this place ticks almost all the other boxes.

unfortunately that is why its so cheap. I doubt you'd be able to get a mortgage for it too... I aimed to buy a place in Bristol with this (lack of) arrangement and the bank wouldn't touch it (probably for good reason)

Bonkers layout on this flat - four bed, two of which are only accessible by walking through the shower room.

grim. bet those partition walls are extra thin too

I photographed one of the Beetham Tower penthouses, where the walls were slightly more than stretched canvas. They were retracting and pinned into the floor to create a modular living space, which was pretty cool, noise spill aside.

You mean each flat has a separate leasehold and the freehold for the building is shared or each flat has its own separate freehold for half the building? The latter would be unusual.

Good point. To what extent were you able to explore different options for the maintenance arrangement before giving up?

I don't get how it should be staged, I guess I need to talk to a solicitor.

3 flats in the building, 2 of which are leasehold with a share of the freehold to the building. The other flat is leasehold without a share of the freehold.

So 2 different maintenance relationships exist. One with the other freeholder, and one between the 2 freeholders and the leaseholder.

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.

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?

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?

It’s 90 years by default however you can opt for any length of years.