Are you look for a lease extension in Bristol? Our solicitors and surveyors will be able to help, whether you own a converted Georgian property in Clifton or a purpose-built flat in Bedminster.
Under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 – known as the LRHUDA – Flat owners have a legal right to extend their lease by 90 years. This will also reduce your ground to £0.
Homehold have experience working across the city, and have recently worked on lease extensions with some of Bristol’s largest housing associations including Brighter Places and Sovereign, but also with private landlords too.
We are also available to work in the wider Avon area including Clevedon and Portishead, and we have recently completed several lease extensions in Keynsham.
Who can extend their lease?
Under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, you have the right to extend your lease by an additional 90 years. It will also remove the ground rent and set it to £0.
The two notable exceptions are those who own a shared ownership property (and pay rent for the bit that they don’t own) and those who bought their flats less than two years ago.
How much does a lease extension cost?
There are three significant factors when you complete a lease extension.
- How much your flat would be worth with a long lease
- Your ground rent, including any rises over time
- The number of years currently remaining on the lease.
Generally, flats let by Bristol City Council will have a £10 a year ground rent and a 125-year term, so these will be fairly inexpensive to extend.
Particularly if you have a short lease, this can be considerably more expensive. We have recently worked on a lease extension on a converted property near Victoria Park, where the lease had dropped below 80 years – and this was more expensive to extend.
If you own a modern flat – for example on the development of Newfoundland way in Portishead – your lease may still be long, but your ground rent will be high. While the ground rent will be removed when you do the lease extension, the price you pay will be higher as a result of the high annual payments you currently pay.
What’s the process?
We offer an end-to-end service where we will take care of your lease extension from the point at which you instruct us right through to the point at which it is registered at the Land Registry.
Our service includes all the legal, valuation and negotiation work that you need to extend your lease. For the legal work we will use Leasehold Legal Services, which is a firm of specialist solicitors who Homehold own. They’re fully authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Stage 1: Preparation and Valuation
It’s important to start every lease extension by reviewing all the legal documents related to your flat. This will include reviewing your lease, title plan and title register. Our solicitors will also review the title for your block and understand the ownership structure.
Having done this, they will brief our valuation team who will complete a valuation to estimate how much you should be paying for your lease extension.
Stage 2: Notice Serving and Negotiation
The next stage of the process is started by preparing a notice to serve on your freeholder, which is called a “Section 42 Notice”. This essentially states that you claim a right to a new lease of an additional 90 years and require your ground rent be set to £0. It also includes an opening offer of how much you want to pay for it.
The freeholder has two months to respond, and they will almost certainly come back with a higher figure.
It is the job of our valuation team to work with the freeholder’s surveyor to agree a fair price for your lease extension.
Stage 3: Conveyancing and Registration
Once a price has been agreed for your lease extension, your freeholder’s solicitor will prepare a document that extends your lease.
This will be reviewed carefully by our solicitors, who will check that adds the required additional years, removes the ground rent, and doesn’t make any other changes that are not desirable to you.
Once the lease is agreed, they will conclude the deal and register it at the Land Registry
How much do Homehold charge for a lease extension?
Our fixed fee is £2,325+VAT, which includes both the valuation and negotiation work that you need for your lease extension, but also the legal work provided by Leasehold Legal Services Limited, which is a law firm that we own.
There really are not any “hidden fees” – our fee includes things like postage and Land Registry charges.
Why use Homehold for your lease extension?
Our team are pure specialists in lease extensions – it really is all that we do.
We have significant experience working in Bristol and across Avon, and are confident in valuing property and negotiating premiums locally.
Hear it from another flat owner in Bristol
Amazing company! Lease extension can be a daunting prospect but from day one Linz explained everything really clearly, answered all my questions and put my mind completely at rest. Great value the price you see is what you pay and I was very happy with the negotiated lease extension price. I received weekly updates even if there is no news which is reassuring when you are investing a lot of money in a process, and all my e.mails were answered promptly. There is nothing I can fault about this company. Great customer service, good value, specialist knowledge I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a lease extension.
Katherine Crossan
