Making sure you settle on a reasonable figure when selling your home can be a bit of headscratcher at the best of times.
But throwing in the complications of a lowering lease period can just add to the confusion when it comes to reaching a fair deal with your buyer.
If you’re selling a property with a low lease, it’s so important get all your ducks in a row before you get the process under way.
Our vast experience and knowledge of how lenders view properties in this bracket suggests that once your lease is below 80 years, people start raising an eyebrow. When you are in between 50 and 75 years, there are a few mortgage lenders who won’t lend and then when it’s even lower, the options become even more sparse.
A lot of developers build properties with 99 years on the lease. This sounds fine in theory but in reality you only have to wait 20 years until it starts to become a problem.
Our advice is simple – get organised!
For starters, you definitely need to know how much it costs to extend. You can get the quote for this yourself or more often than not we would recommend getting a local surveyor who specialises in this to get the ball rolling.
Depending on the price of the property and the length of time left to run on the lease, the extension can cost anything between £12,000 and £60,000 although typically it’s between £18,000 and £20,000.
Knowing the figure is an absolute necessity because it is only with this in mind that you can value your property accurately and negotiate around this as you know the costs your buyer will incur.
Never think as a seller that you can get away with this. Every person who views your house will ask the question and you need to prepared with the answer.
So if you want advice on how best to proceed, just give us a call on 01992-878580.