Buying Freehold in mews property

Hi Mark,

This may be a stupid question, but why do you want to buy a share of the freehold?

In my experience from readers questions shared freehold often causes issues.

You can read the rules on the LEASE website in their Advice Guide. I don’t think though that you have any statutory right for this property as you have described it. A resident freeholder and size of the property puts it outside the qualifying criteria assuming he has lived there since the conversion.

Reply to the comment left by “Neil Patterson” at “21/10/2016 – 09:58“:

HI Neil

The reason being is that we have a demised roof terrace which we would like to build another floor on, this has already been done by all the other properties within the mews. So we shouldn’t have any problems with planning, However, when i mentioned our plans to the freeholder he said he would only give consent if we sold him the ownership of the garage, which also forms part of the building. My feeling is surely it would be better to buy our share of the FH now. If we try to proceed with planning application by just owning the LH then if we were successful and any objections he had were overruled then surely the FH price would / could increase.?

What does the lease say about such requests? There is often a clause that the freeholder cannot unreasonably withold consent.

I would consult the leasehold advisory service for advice. You may be able to force the freeholder to provide justification for refusal, which he would struggle to do if yours is the only one unconverted.

It is common for freeholders to demand payment of a fee for granting such approvals, but this sounds a little like blackmail rather than just leverage to me. I would be annoyed (not that that would solve anything).

I don’t think you can force him to sell you part of the freehold, but again have a conversation with leasehold advisory service.