In short, yes… but let us explain.

There is certainly more work for us to do. First of all, we’ll need to identify the freeholder, their management company, headlessor and any management agents. The lease agreement or title checks may help us identify these, but in some cases, we may have to perform additional investigations.

What we need to do then is dependant on the requirements of the lease. For example, the lease may require that we contact the freeholder to notify them about a change of ownership. This notice will need to be receipted as a means of acknowledgement and to do this, the freeholder is likely to make a charge.

There is additional work to do after completion as well as reading leases, assignments from the deeds and asking additional questions and checking the replies. Solicitors would conduct these checks, to ensure that you comply with the lease and also that you do not inherit any issues from the seller. They will usually charge more for this additional work.

However, it is important to note that the work involved for a leasehold house will be less than that for a flat or an apartment. Where the property is a flat or apartment, there can be a complicated structure of titles and responsibilities to understand between the freeholder, management companies, headlessors and managing agents working for them. Until we see the lease agreement, it’s really difficult to say for definite what will be involved.

As mentioned above there are more documents to check and ask questions about. The information will need to be obtained from third parties (a freeholder or a management company) who then sometimes employ managing agents to deal with these. Getting this information doesn’t usually come free, and the seller may need to pay for information packs which then need to be reviewed.

Leaseholds are an area of the law that has undergone scrutiny and change in recent years. Some of these changes have been substantial and important, leading to more information being required. These changes also mean that some leases require updating to ensure they meet the current requirements.

Not necessarily. There is an incorrect assumption that leasehold houses are not as valuable as freehold houses. There are longstanding legal protections for leasehold titles, which place leasehold properties on almost the same footing as a freehold.

The only real difference is that where a lease is running on the short side, an extension of the lease might be needed. Again, there is a protected legal procedure for this to happen; Even when the freeholder is not known and not interested in extending the lease.

It is important to point out that not all solicitors are comfortable dealing with leasehold houses. Historically, leasehold houses have only been found in parts of Yorkshire. It may seem like an alien notion if you have only ever known leasehold property to be a flat or an apartment.

Absolutely not! As mentioned above there are legal protections that leasehold properties enjoy. There are ongoing discussions at various levels of government to further strengthen and simply these rights. By discounting leasehold properties, you would also be cutting out a large portion of properties that you may be interested in. The GOV.UK website suggests that 20% of property in England is leasehold, with this being a much higher percentage in South Yorkshire.