Charlie Hewitt

Hi all. I’m undergoing the process of extending the lease on a flat. I contacted the management company who manage the block of flats and requested a lease renewal. I have paid them £1020 for the evaluation so they should now be able to tell me the premium for the lease renewal. I payed them over two months ago. I am emailing and calling them on a daily basis and getting no response. I’ve been told by people they are trying to delay the process so they can inflate the eventual premium I will have to pay. Any advice on what I could do would be appreciated. Or if anyone is familiar with the process can tell me what they might be up to. Many thanks Charlie

If there is no mortgage on your flat.. you could potentially get a BTL mortgage on it for 75% of the value of the flat. Say it’s valued at £170k you could basically draw £127,500 which could be used to buy the 2nd flat outright. However depending on your strategy/goals you could draw out a smaller amount for a deposit and use a mortgage as well.

Hi all. Advice needed!! I’m looking to extend the lease on my flat as it only has around 60 years left! there’s no mortgage on the property so I would like to remortgage the property to release some equity to use as a deposit for another flat. However I need to renew the lease before I can do that. Does anyone know the process? Are there things I need to be aware of? How long does it take? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Many thanks Charlie.

Hi all!! Advice needed!! I’m 23 years old, currently living with parents, I have no immediate financial responsibility’s and very little outgoings. I have £35K to invest. My current financial set up won’t change for a number of years, so I’m in a position where I feel comfortable taking some risks. How would you use this to make a start on a property journey in today’s economic climate? Any advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks!

Hi all. just wondering if anyone here has any thoughts on shared ownership as a way of getting onto the property ladder. From what I’ve gathered you only need a small deposit for the percentage of the property you own, but have to pay rent on the percentage you don’t own. Any thoughts or info on shared ownership would be much appreciated. Thanks! Charlie

Hi all. Can anyone please give some examples of what should be included in an AST tenancy agreement? Many Thanks! Charlie

With options 2 the only issue I see is you want to buy potentially four properties with a budget of 120k. Lets say the purchase price is 100k on each property and you get 75%LTV meaning you deposit 25k on each property. That leaves you with 20k for legal fees, work that needs doing and anything else inbetween (5k per property) that’s a tight budget. Maybe look at doing 2 or 3 BTL in nice areas that you have extensively researched for good capital growth, rental income etc. It might be worth spending a little more on 2 nice properties in good areas. Gain as much rental income and capital growth as you can and do it all again! Obviously you need to run through the numbers to decide this. Hope me this helps and good luck with it all!!

Hello im looking to extend the lease on my flat. There is 56 years remaining. I’ve contacted the lease hold company and they replied with this email. you have a legal right to apply for a new lease of 90 years beyond the current term unexpired, at a peppercorn rental (nil ground rental). The landlord is willing on a without prejudice and subject to contract basis to consider informal proposals (thus saving some legal costs for you). He would consider an extension mirroring the statutory basis as above. In order to advise him on the premium (price) I will need to undertake a valuation, for which he would expect my fees to be covered by you (as would be the case if you made a formal claim). The fee is £585 plus vat. Provided we are able to agree things swiftly after that, there would be no further fees except that you would have to cover the landlord’s legal fees for preparation of the new documentation. It is your prerogative to instruct your own surveyor to advise you on values (I will still need to advise the landlord separately) and indeed you could decide to go down the statutory route of extending by serving formal notice (in which case the landlord’s valuation and legal costs would be paid on top of the premium). This sounds like the landlord wants to do it privately. Is there anything for me to be concerned about with this process? What fees am I obligated to pay for? And if I do not have the funds to renew the lease now, can I attach the cost of that to the sale of the flat? thank you any advice is appreciated

Thank you for helping me navigate through this. It is much appreciated. There’s still plenty of obstacles in my way so I’m sure I’ll be asking more questions later. Thank you

There’s nothing official on paper to say that we are family related. However I am mentioned in his will. And we would have to declare this through a solicitor because as mentioned earlier he would effectively be gifting me some of the value of the property. Is this something the mortgage company or any other legal source would flag up as unusual and cause problems with the whole process. Thank you

We’re not actually family related so we don’t have the same surname. So don’t think it should be a problem? Thank you for all this advice!

That helps a lot thank you. Obviously this situation is a bit different from just an every day but to let, so would you advise using a mortgage broker to help this go smoothly, even though the mortgage would be as little as £30k? Thanks

My dad owns a flat with 2 and a half years left on the mortgage which currently has £18,000 remaining to pay off. The flat is worth £135,000 roughly. Due to circumstances the idea was brought up that I could buy the flat on a buy to let, interest only mortgage for something like £30,000. He would continue to live there renting it from me and only pay what I’m paying in interest. So I won’t be making any profit from rent, however when I come to remortgage I could potentially take £100k out as equity and use that to purchase another property to rent out. This would save him a lot of money in the meantime as he’s 3 years off retirement. and it could help me kickstart my property investment journey. What things do we both need consider that could effect us in the short and long term?any advice is appreciated. Thanks