Buying and selling a property solicitors

If the land your home sits on is owned by someone else (the freeholder), it can be harder to sell it or get a mortgage on it.

A lease dropping below 80 years can seriously affect its market value. As time goes on, it can get more expensive to extend it.

One way to protect its value (and potentially get rid of your ground rent payments) is to extend the lease. You can extend a house lease by up to 50 years, and a flat lease by up to 90 years.

If your landlord agrees, a ‘voluntary’ lease extension is usually quick (6-12 weeks). A solicitor will make sure the terms are fair and your landlord isn’t adding hidden costs.

If your landlord disagrees, you still have a right to an extension. After new legislation in 2025, you no longer have to own the property for 2+ years.

We’ll send your landlord a formal offer on your behalf, and they’ll have 2 months to accept. If they counter the offer, you will both have 6 months to negotiate. This is called a ‘statutory’ extension.

If your landlord is treating you unfairly, we can help you explore several legal routes, like:

• Making court or tribunal applications
• Resolving residential management issues
• Setting up or supporting Residents’ Associations
• Taking over management of your building (Right to Manage)
• Getting together as a group with other tenants to buy the freehold
• Using your Right of First Refusal to buy the freehold if it’s being sold.

Many people prefer buying the freehold over extending the lease, so they have control over the property, and don’t need to keep paying ground rent.

But you don’t necessarily have a right to this. You can make an offer to the freeholder or landlord. If they say no, we can help you explore certain legal routes like serving them a notice to acquire the freehold through ‘enfranchisement’. Your right to enfranchisement depends on the house and your lease agreement.

If you have a mortgage, your lender (bank or building society) has a legal claim on your property. Their name is on the title deeds, and they’ll need to be removed if you go to another lender.

We can take the hassle off your hands, and deal with your new lender’s questions, searches, and paperwork. Here’s how it works:

1. You will get a quote (or several) from various lenders, then pass your chosen lender’s details to us
2. We’ll contact your current lender to get an ‘initial redemption statement’ (telling us how much is left on your mortgage), as well as any property deeds they might hold
3. Your new lender will send us a ‘mortgage offer’. We’ll review it and send the mortgage deed for you to sign
4. We’ll check the title deeds of your property for any mortgages or loans secured on it, as well as any rights and restrictions (‘burdens’)
5. If your new lender insists as a condition of your mortgage, we’ll carry out searches (like water and drainage, environmental, and local authority searches) – or get search insurance if your lender accepts
6. We’ll ask your old lender for an updated redemption statement (as it can change slightly over a few weeks)
7. We can then agree on a completion date, request the funds from the new mortgage, and pay any remaining money to you. We’ll register your new lender on the property title, and make sure your old one is taken off.

• Legal fees – this is for the legal work (conveyancing).
• Land Registry fee – when you change mortgage lender the records held by the Land Registry need to be updated.
• Search fees – these may apply to cover the cost of Local Authority, Drainage and Water, Coal Authority and Environmental searches if required. Alternatively a search insurance policy might be required instead.

Our Conveyancing Fees Calculator provides an estimate for conveyancing fees for a property up to a value of £500,000.

For properties valued over £500,000, and more information on conveyancing fees, please refer to our pricing.

Usually between four and eight weeks.

As there’s a lot of paperwork to complete, getting any documents we send back to us ASAP can help speed things along. We always aim to take the stress out of the process through regular updates over the phone, email, or text message – whichever you prefer. And we’ll work hard to work through delays and hit your target completion date.