2013-04-16 10:05:26 +02:00

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property
propertyadvice
propertyclinic
7306218
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# What price a lease extension?
## Property Clinic: our experts answer your questions about all aspects of
buying, owning and selling a house. This week: the cost of a lease extension.
By Lorna Vestey 4:00PM GMT 25 Feb 2010
[Comments][1]
**The market **
My daughter made an offer on a flat in London conditional on the lease being
extended, which was agreed and accepted. Two months later she is no further
forward. The vendors are now offering a "Section 42" so that she can extend
the lease herself; they are asking her to get a survey to assess the maximum
it would cost and will reduce the price by that sum. Is this normal?
Apparently, the vendor is now in a hurry and has no time to extend it himself.
Could this survey guarantee the cost of the extension?
**Lorna Vestey writes**
No, the only guarantee of the cost of a lease extension is a binding written
offer/agreement from the landlord or a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal decision.
However, a surveyor should be able to calculate a reasonable estimate.
Sometimes the cost of past extensions in the building can give a useful guide.
It is very common for an outgoing leaseholder to serve notice for an
extension, then for the sale to go through when this has been accepted by the
landlord, whose counter-notice gives his figure for the extension. The buyer
inherits the right to extend and pays the costs and premium.
The Section 42 is the form submitted by a qualifying leaseholder to the
freeholder giving notice that they are applying for a lease extension. To
qualify they must have owned the property for at least two years, so your
daughter could not immediately do this herself. To obtain certainty, she could
insist on waiting for the counter-notice from the freeholder (usually served
after two months) and exchange conditional on the figure it includes.
Your daughter's solicitor should have advised her about all this and long
since chased up the vendor's solicitor to establish exactly how things stand.
Has notice been served and, crucially, accepted? If no surveyor has yet been
commissioned, it sounds as though nothing has been done as figures have to be
included in the Section 42. If this is so, and the lease extension is
important to her, she should probably withdraw, find a new property and a new
solicitor.
* Send your property problems to: Property Clinic, The Daily Telegraph, 111
Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT email
[propertyclinic@telegraph.co.uk][2]
* Our experts regret that they cannot answer readers' letters personally.
All correspondence should be sent to them at the address given above. We
regret that we cannot acknowledge letters. Please keep them brief
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