• Leasehold Pack

    By Guest on 17th Jun 2015

    My offer was accepted on a leasehold property. My solicitor has requested a leasehold pack from the seller's solicitors and is adamant the seller should pay. The seller has refused to pay for this pack and said we should contact the Management Company ourselves. My solicitor said this is unusual and a sign the seller is uncooperative, and that I should withdraw. I am not sure if this is correct advice.

  • 2 Answers

    By Guest on 17/06/2015

    The information your solicitor is requesting is information that should always be obtained when buying a leasehold property. It is usual for the seller to pay and indeed it is very likely that your seller's would have had to pay for it when your seller bought the property, so your seller's refusal to pay is on the face of it unreasonable but could be attributable to any number of factors - it could be he can't afford it, he could have been forced to pay when he bought it, he could be receiving bad advice from his solicitor or he could just be tight fisted. Even if he is "uncooperative" this is not necessarily a barrier to a successful purchase and I do think your solicitor is overstepping the mark is recommending you don't proceed as a consequence of circumstances which have nothing to do with the quality of the legal title. A conveyancer's role is to investigate the legal title, make various protocol searches and enquiries and present the facts so that his client can make an informed decision. He should not be telling a buyer not to proceed, at most if because of some title defect or surrounding issue he does not think that the property is worth the purchase price or is not fit for the purpose which his client intends to use it he should say so. An uncooperative seller can certainly delay a sale and in extreme cases can be fatal to a transaction but it is not necessarily so. If you want the property enough to take the hit on the management company's fee and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it you should proceed. I would course add the caveat that I am assuming there are no other adverse circumstances beyond those you have described.

  • By Guest on 18/06/2015

    Thank you very much for your detailed answer. There is a lot there for me to think about. You have identified my dilemma.
    Just to clarify on your last point: I do not think that there are other adverse circumstances affecting my solicitor's advice. However, in the specific case, it would not surprise me if the seller was behind with service charges and / or other payments.

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