By Linda Kirk, director of residential conveyancing
Selling your house is stressful enough.
Even if everything goes to plan, dealing with viewings, negotiations and contracts can lead to sleepless nights.
Add in lawyers who speak to you in gobbledygook and you’re worked up before you’ve even packed a box.
It’s a minefield. We set up Adkirk Law to provide a caring service which goes over and above to help make people’s house moves as easy as possible.
We care about our clients and the wider industry, and there are some homeowners who have a very raw deal and who need help.
That’s why, as a member of the Conveyancing Association, we’ve been supporting the National Leasehold Campaign to abolish leasehold laws across the UK and finally the Government has agreed to scrap leaseholds on new build properties and reduce ground rent to zero.
There are over six million people around the country who want to sell their home but can’t because of issues with their Lease. That means they own their house, but not the land that it sits on.
It’s like trying to sell a car that’s clamped.
Because they can’t sell the land, these poor families aren’t able to sell their house because nobody else wants to take on the unfair terms of the leasehold and it’s too expensive to buy the freehold from the developer/freeholder.
This issue is mainly the case with newly built properties but can affect people with older Leasehold properties. It is completely unfair, and we’ve heard some horror stories of people who are being exploited by landlords/management companies for all sorts of charges such as extortionate administration fees for consents and information packs when selling.
The Government changes sound good at first, but the promises stop there. It would only apply to people who buy new build properties in the future, meaning the thousands of homeowners currently unable to sell their home would be no better off.
There’s one more spanner to add into the works. The Government’s pledge to abolish new leaseholds was made back in June and said to be implemented ‘when parliamentary time allows.’
Given Parliament has been fairly busy with other agendas for the last three months, and now is preoccupied with December’s general election, the law will be on the backburner until next year, meaning even more families could find themselves trapped before the issue is solved.
We’d like to see whoever forms the next Government to pledge to look after local families and commit to abolishing leaseholds in the first few months of their term, meaning that we can help them get on with getting their house sold and moving on.
