When the new town of Milton Keynes was first designed and built, affordable well-placed housing was at the top of the list of priorities. Today, Milton Keynes is home to more than 250,000 people and covers around 35 square miles. The population has grown enormously over the past few years, with the town’s vibrant culture and busy shopping precincts being very attractive for young families looking to start their lives together.
The town is one of the only ones in the country to have a dedicated separate cycleway network, with its entire transport infrastructure designed around easy travel — indeed, its grid system and roundabouts are famous across the whole country, the town having been designed to make it easily navigable for cars, cyclists and pedestrians alike.
With the population boom in Milton Keynes, the need for housing has meant thousands of new homes have been built around the town, with many of them flats or leasehold apartments.
Thinking about extending your lease? Got a question? Call our specialist solicitors on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 for FREE initial phone advice – with no strings attached.
YOUR RIGHT TO EXTEND YOUR LEASE
If you live in Milton Keynes and you own a leasehold flat, did you know that you have the legal right to extend your lease? Well, you do – either by forcing your freeholder to grant you an additional 90 years on to the end of your current lease, or by agreeing a voluntary or informal lease extension with your freeholder.
Put simply, subject to a few simple conditions (click here to see if you and your flat fit the criteria for lease extension) anyone can extend their lease at any time – but beware, because the process is not always easy.
HOW A LEASE EXTENSION SPECIALIST CAN HELP
It’s not a legal requirement that you get a solicitor to represent you – but most sensible people do. It’s a bit like buying a house – yes, you could do the legal work yourself, but sensibly, very few people try, preferring to appoint a specialist. For a start, when you come to extend your lease, it’s almost inevitable that your freeholder will hire a solicitor of their own.
But if you do decide to appoint a solicitor, it’s really important that you get someone who specialises in lease extension. Very few solicitors do – most conveyancing solicitors only come across lease extension once in a blue moon, and with respect, a lot of them make a complete mess of it, as they don’t understand the regulations and, in particular, the very tight timetable that a formal lease extension involves.
By getting your own specialist solicitor, you can rest assured that you have a expert to guide you through the process of extending a lease with the minimum of fuss.
EXTENDING YOUR LEASE – DON’T DELAY
It’s true that you can extend your lease at any stage, but our strong advice is to get your lease extension through as soon as possible. Why?
The price is going up.
Currently the ongoing increase in property prices means a hike in the premium you will have to play for extending your lease. When you add that to the fact that every day your lease is getting shorter, which in turn means you have to pay more for your lease extension, the reality is that delaying your is extension application is simply going to make it more expensive. In fact, recently one major London-based freehold company estimated that the cost of residential lease extension was going up by 12% every year – so, putting your application off by another seven years could mean you have to pay your freeholder 100% more!!!
Lease extensions take time
Unfortunately, many people only think about extending a lease when it comes to sell the property – that can create problems with timescales. A formal lease extension takes on average, six months, due to the strict timetable involved. The alternative, an informal lease extension with your freeholder still takes time – and you risk dealing with an script landlord who could pull the plug on your agreement at any time – or try to use your need for a quick lease extension to increase the price. So a sensible leaseholder will want to extend their lease well in advance of a potential sale
Don’t let your lease drop below 80 years
Why? That’s simple. The very day that the remaining term of your lease drops below 80 years, your freeholder is entitled to charge an additional premium – which will cost you thousands of pounds more. So our advice is that whilst you should always look to extend your lease sooner rather than later, that’s particularly important when the remaining term of your lease is somewhere between 80 and 85 years.
A short lease means mortgage problems
Post recession, most lenders have significantly tightened their criteria on lending on leasehold property. As a result, many lenders simply won’t allow a buyer to borrow on any lease with a term below 70, or even 80 years in some cases. So, if you end up with a short lease, you could find that most purchasers are simply won’t be able to get a mortgage which means a delay in selling and probably a much lower sale price. The answer – early lease extension.
YOUR MILTON KEYNES LEASE EXTENSION – HOW WE CAN HELP YOU
• With experience developed over 20 years and many thousands of successful lease extensions, our team have got the specialism you need – click here to see what our clients and the surveyors we use think of us
• We offer FREE initial phone advice – just call us now on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544
• We will arrange to appoint a specialist surveyor to accurately value your lease extension – getting the right surveyor is as important as getting the right specialist solicitor
• Our team deal with the application itself, all of the accompanying notices and documentation and make sure your application sticks to what can be a strict timetable
THINKING ABOUT A LEASE EXTENSION IN MILTON KEYNES? CALL US NOW
Over the last 20 years or so, are experts have helped many thousands of leaseholders with extending a lease.
We can help you with your lease extension wherever you live in England and Wales – we regularly take instructions from clients solely by phone, email or Skype video only.
So what’s stopping you getting in touch now? After all, initial phone advice from our experts is FREE.
• Simply, phone us now on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 or,
• Fill out the email contact form below
[contact-form-7 id=”189″ title=”Contact form 1″