Do you own a leasehold flat in the City of Birmingham or within the wider Birmingham Metropolitan Area, such as Redditch, Wolverhampton, Tamworth or Dudley? Do you need a specialist lease extension surveyor and solicitor? Homehold are here to help!
Considering using Homehold for your lease extension in Birmingham?
The statutory lease extension process can seem overwhelming and long winded. Homehold offers an end-to-end service for a single fixed fee to handle the complex process.
We have our own valuation team and own a law firm, called LLS, which is set up to manage legal work for all our cases. So instead of stressing about hiring two independent firms, you can get the whole project done within a single fixed-fee service.
Taking advantage of the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act of 1993, you have the legal right to extend your lease. This process is known as a formal or statutory lease extension.
A statutory lease extension enables you to extend your lease by 90 years and reduce your ground rent to £0 (a “peppercorn”). Unlike an informally negotiated lease extension, your freeholder can’t add additional restrictions and charges to your lease.
Whether your freeholder is the local authority, like for those purpose-built flats found in Harborne, or a period conversion with a private freeholder in areas like Coventry or Moseley, we can certainly help you to extend your lease.
Who can extend their lease in Birmingham?
Almost every leaseholder has the right to extend their lease.
However, you can’t extend your lease yet if you purchased your flat under a shared ownership scheme and don’t own 100% of your property.
From the 31 January 2025, you are no longer required to wait two years before you can extend your lease. This is due to a change in the new Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. So, if you have recently purchased your flat or inherited the flat, we can get started straight away!
How much does a lease extension cost?
The cost of your lease extension is dependent on three separate things:
- The value of your flat
- The number of years remaining on your lease
- The amount of ground rent you pay yearly (and if it rises over time)
The best way to explain this is:
- Flats that have a higher value, you pay a higher premium
- Flats that have lower years remaining on their lease, you pay a higher premium
- Flats that have a higher ground rent, you pay a higher premium
If you wish to do a Birmingham City Council lease extension, you can typically expect your premium to be lower. Most flats leased by the councils were for 125 years from the 1980s and usually have a low ground rent (£10).
We did a case in Whittington Close, West Bromwich and because this flat had a low ground rent, the premium was mainly based on the market value of the flat. This value is typically based on evidence we find of similar style flats that have sold in recent years. Whilst it is great to pay lower for a premium due to the ground rent, it is worth noting most local authorities are slow to respond back to us – so expect the process to take a little while to complete.
We have also worked on trickier cases that have intermediate landlords or high/doubling ground rents such as flats with private landlords such as Garden Court, Edgbaston & Newhall Farm Close, Sutton Coldfield.
In these cases, whilst evidence is important, we must trade further calculations to ensure we can secure a reasonable premium.
What’s the process?
Homehold offer a one-stop service that includes all the necessary valuation, negotiation and legal work for single fixed fee (including any disbursements).
We handle the process from the start all the way till the final step of the process, when your new lease is registered at the Land Registry. You will be kept up to date throughout the process, so you know exactly what to expect.
Stage 1
To start off the lease extension process, LLS, our legal firm, will do an in-depth review of all the documents relating to your flat and your development. They do this early in the process to ensure there aren’t any nasty surprises (This is usually straight-forward if your freeholder is Birmingham City Council)
Once the legal team at LLS have all the necessary information, they will pass this over to the valuation team at Homehold, who will prepare a valuation report.
This lease extension valuation report serves two main purposes:
- To give you an idea of how much your premium will cost
- A chance of us to gather as much as evidence as possible to use when we get to negotiations, to negotiate a fair price for your lease extension.
The evidence we look at are flats that have sold within your development in the last three years and flats in the wider market that have sold in the last two years.
Stage 2
After the valuation report has been done by the valuation team, it will be sent over to you. And once you have approved the report, LLS (our subsidiary law firm) will draft a Section 42 Notice to be sent over to your freeholder.
This document states your legal right to extend your lease by 90 years and how much you offer to pay for it.
Your freeholder then has two months to come back to us with a Section 45 Notice (counteroffer) and usually they will use this full time to respond.
This is when the valuation team will use the evidence in the earlier valuation report to negotiate a lower premium. This can take one week or, equally, five months – it really depends on your freeholder on how fast they are to respond back to our queries.
Stage 3
Once we have an agreement your freeholder, your freeholder’s solicitor will produce a document which extends your lease by 90 years and removes your ground rent. The legal team at LLS will then check this document line by line to make sure your freeholders haven’t added anything contentious.
How much do Homehold charge?
Homehold operate a fixed-fee service for all lease extensions, this is £2,580+VAT.
This is charged in three separate instalments of £860+VAT.
All the legal work conducted by LLS, our subsidiary law firm, is included within our fixed fee. LLS are fully authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Why use Homehold for your lease extension?
More and more flats are approaching the dreaded 80 year mark every year where it gets more expensive to extend your lease, and more difficult to sell and remortgage your flat. Homehold are a specialist lease extension firm designed to work in the interest of leaseholders.
We have a lot of experience on working on a wide range of properties in areas such as Digbeth, Bourneville & Kings Heath, so you can feel confident Homehold can handle the process on your behalf.
Our mission is to successfully achieve lower premiums for our clients whilst making the process as smooth as possible.
Hear it from another flat owner in Birmingham
Fantastic company to deal with. Throughout a complex process Leah and the Homehold team without fail kept me updated every week and every step. They explained things in clear terms and offered advice where asked for. They really went above and beyond, negotiating with leaseholders and other solicitors to make sure that I got the best deal, even bargaining a reduction in the solicitors fees!
MP
