What are the risks of buying a leasehold property?

Things to do before buying a leasehold property.

Before you go ahead to buy a leasehold property, you must put into consideration various things just to make sure that you don’t land into a leasehold scandal. Some of these things include;

Read through restrictions over the property.

When a landlord grants a lease must include a number of restrictions, basically what should be expected of you when you buy the property, for you to successfully buy the property you need first to read carefully through the instructions and comply with these terms. The landlord will base on these restrictions to manage your stay.

Consider the length of lease.

Every lease agreement must indicate the period of time a tenant is going to lease the leasehold property, it can either be short term or long term with the minimum amount of years set.

You should therefore:
  • Locate the lease term
  • The starting date of the lease
  • Calculate the duration of stay
Consider the hidden charges

A lot of people who are willing to buy the leasehold scandal property are mostly not aware of the very small hidden charges that are involved in this kind of purchase; this includes things like, sales pack fee, notice of transfer charges and notice of charge fee. Unless you consider these small charges you might not be able to conclude your transactions successfully.

Ground rent

Ground rent is a fee paid by the leasehold owner to the freehold owner as rent for the land on which the property stands on. This is a nominal amount but it is a requirement of a lease so a leasehold owner must pay it on due date. All these things mentioned above must be put into consideration before you try to complete any lease contract successfully and also to avoid falling into leasehold scandal as a leasehold owner.