Birmingham has a population of over 1.1 million people [according to 2018 figures from Birmingham City Council itself]. So, as Britain’s second city, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that there are a huge number of flats in Birmingham, many of which are owned under a long leasehold [i.e. a lease originally granted for at least 21 years] rather than rented from say the local authority or a housing association. In fact according to the 2011 Census, Birmingham had 86,595 purpose built flats – and that’s before you consider consider the tens of thousands of houses that have been converted into flats and the thousands of new builds.

But owning a leasehold flat isn’t like owning a freehold house. You don’t have complete control over your block.. Instead, you have to pay service charges and ground rent to your freeholder – and year by year your lease gets gradually shorter. So when it expires, you end up owning precisely nothing.

Do You Own an Apartment in Birmingham? Are You Interested in Buying The Freehold Of Your Block? For Expert FREE Initial Phone Advice, Call Us On FREEPHONE 0800 1404544

THE ANSWER? FREEHOLD PURCHASE

One way of avoiding these problems with a leasehold property is to join together with some of the other flat owners to buy the freehold of your block – through a process known as leasehold enfranchisement (often referred to as ‘freehold purchase’ or ‘collective enfranchisement’).

If you live in Birmingham and are thinking of buying your freehold, you’re going to need a specialist solicitor – the specialist enfranchisement team here at Bonallack & Bishop can help.

You can also buy the freehold of your leasehold house.
Click here to find more about leasehold house enfranchisement

LEASE ENFRANCHISEMENT – WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Your flat will increase in value – and will become easier to sell

• You take over management of your block

• Block maintenance will probably become cheaper, as you organise it yourself

• You don’t have to put up with a difficult landlord

• You can extend your lease up to 999 years

• No more ground rent to pay

• Greater security – as a freeholder, normally only failure to meet your mortgage could cause eviction

WHY A SPECIALIST ENFRANCHISEMENT SOLICITOR IS SO IMPORTANT

You may wonder why any solicitor couldn’t handle your lease enfranchisement. After all, how difficult can it be?

Lease enfranchisement is, in fact, a particularly complicated area of law with tight rules, strict deadlines and a number of traps for the unwary. It is an area of law that very few property solicitors will ever have dealt with – and therefore are unlikely to have sufficient understanding of the issues surrounding enfranchisement.

Given that your freeholder is highly likely to instruct a specialist lease enfranchisement solicitor of their own, you do not want to start on an uneven footing – especially when large financial sums are at stake.

OUR COLLECTIVE ENFRANCHISEMENT EXPERTS

Finding an expert lease enfranchisement solicitor is difficult – the vast majority of property solicitors deal with regular conveyancing of flats and houses, with landlord and tenant issues or deal with commercial property. But not freehold purchase.

In contrast;

• We have a team of five who specialise in nothing but lease extension, right to manage company formation and lease enfranchisement.

• We are the only solicitors are recommended for freehold purchase by the Homeowners Alliance, the largest organisation representing Britain’s homeowners.

 • Our team liaise with specialist enfranchisement and lease extension surveyors every single day – so, if you wish, as part of our one-stop shop service, we cannot only introduce you to a specialist local surveyor, we can also instruct them on your behalf.

• We are members of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners (ALEP) – the only group of specialist enfranchisement surveyors and solicitors nationwide.

 • We can handle your enfranchisement from beginning to end – from obtaining the initial valuation, and serving the Enfranchisement Notice, to helping you with formation of your freehold purchase company and registering you as a new owners with HM Land Registry – and even taking your case to the First Tier Property Tribunal in the unlikely event it becomes necessary

 • Our dedicated team have helped thousands of clients with successful freehold purchase and lease extension cases over the last 25 years

THE IMPORTANCE OF BUYING YOUR FREEHOLD WITH AT LEAST 80 YEARS LEFT ON THE LEASE

Leaseholders seeking the right to buying the freehold of their block should be aware that it is more expensive once a lease has less than 80 years to run (the same applies if you’re thinking of extending your lease). Sometimes much more expensive.

Why? That’s because where the lease has less than 80 years left on it, your freeholder has the right to charge an additional premium – which is known as the “marriage value”. (The marriage value is valued at half the difference between the property value before and after the leaseholders have exercised their freehold right to bu)y.

In practical terms for most flats, this means each individual leaseholder may have to pay thousands more to participate in the freehold purchase. And that figure only increases as the lease term steadily drops.

Marriage value also applies to lease extension – so if you’re considering the alternative of extending your lease – try to do so before that critical 80 year period.

N.B. There is no marriage value if the unexpired portion of the lease has more than 80 years to run

GETTING OTHER LEASEHOLDERS INVOLVED IN BUYING THE FREEHOLD

If your leasehold enfranchisement is going to be successful, you are going to need the support of at least 50% of leaseholders of the block of flats.

And getting half of all the leaseholders to commit, and remain committed, can be a tricky job with medium and larger sized blocks.

However, the good news is that the freehold purchase process can be started with less than 50% of leaseholders, provided the 50% quota is eventually reached. This is an important point to bear in mind. Often leaseholders will be reluctant to get involved with the collective enfranchisement until they are sure it will go through. This “chicken and egg” situation needs tackling at the early stages of freehold purchase.

One of the best ways of getting people committed to the project is by getting them signed up to what is known as “a participation agreement” – a legally binding contract setting out the details of the planned enfranchisement and who will be involved.

Our specialist team can help you draft a participation agreement that suits your particular circumstances.
Click here to read more about participation agreements.

THINKING OF ENFRANCHISEMENT IN BIRMINGHAM? CONTACT US TODAY

Due to the specialist nature of our service, we represent leaseholders and freeholders alike throughout England and Wales – with the vast majority of our enfranchisement cases being run by phone, email or video call.

For FREE no strings attached initial advice and a FREE enfranchisement quote

• Call our team free on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 or

• Fill in the email enquiry form below

Solicitors Specialising in Freehold Purchase For Clients Nationwide

Statutory Freehold enfranchisement – the legal process where 50% or more of the leaseholders in a  block of flats get together to buy their block’s freehold from the landlord – often seems like an interminable process with a never-ending list of forms to complete and regulations to adhere to.

It’s certainly true that the rules and paperwork can be daunting, but there is a strict regulatory framework with deadlines governing the whole process. These deadlines are designed to allow leaseholders to get the process completed within a reasonable period of time, while still allowing the freeholder time to manage their side of the process.

Need Expert Enfranchisement Advice? Call us on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 for FREE Initial Phone Advice.

Freehold Enfranchisement – the difference between the informal and statutory process.

Just like extending your lease, when you come to buy the freehold of your block with some of your fellow leaseholders, you have two options.

1. An informal or voluntary enfranchisement

2. The formal or statutory enfranchisement process

There are a number of differences between the two. In short,

• provided you get the process right and your block is eligible for enfranchisement, then buying the freehold is your legal right. In general terms the freeholder simply cannot stop you.

• in contrast there is no formality to the voluntary route. no timetable, and no set procedure. You simply negotiate and agree terms with your freeholder. And the main disadvantage is that in using this process, you have absolutely no way of forcing your freeholder to complete the sale. Your freeholder is completely free to drop out at any stage, which is why we would strongly advise against any informal enfranchisement.

• one disadvantage of the formal route is that it does mean you need to strictly comply with the rigid the timetable and complicated procedure. Making a simple mistake can mean your application fails and have to start from the beginning again which can cause considerable delay and significantly increase costs. remember with the formal route you will have to pay not only your own legal and valuation costs but also the reasonable and legal valuation costs of your freeholder.

That’s why it’s so important getting a specialist solicitor with plenty of relevant experience to handle your statutory enfranchisement claim.

NB there are also strict guidelines when you use the formal statutory process to buy the freehold of a leasehold house

Enfranchisement – the Need for Specialist Solicitors

As you will see below, implications of missing a deadline when it comes to formal enfranchisement can prove very expensive indeed. That’s right really important that you get a solicitor who really understands freehold purchase. Few property solicitors regularly deal with lease extensions – and far fewer ever come across enfranchisement.

However if you instructed leasehold team here at Bonallack and Bishop you can rest assured that you have experts with plenty of relevant experience covering your back. We will make sure that you meet all of the deadlines and that the correct paperwork is served in the right way, at the right time.

And to prove it, we are the only solicitors nationwide recommended by the HomeOwners Alliance (the leading organisation representing Britain’s 17 million homeowners) for legal advice on any aspect of lease extension, right to manage or freehold purchase.

What starts the statutory enfranchisement process?

The 1st stage is the issue of what is known as the enfranchisement notice. Getting this right is essential. Getting wrong is likely to mean you will need to abandon the application and start again from scratch – wasting time and legal costs.
Click here to read more about the enfranchisement notice

Statutory Freehold Enfranchisement – Deadlines Affect Everyone

The legal deadlines apply to both sides in the collective enfranchisement. If the leaseholders miss a deadline when going through the freehold purchase process then the whole process will be declared abandoned by default, or the freeholder can ask the County Court to declare the process invalid.

If the freeholder is the one who misses the deadline then it is possible that the collective enfranchisement can be forced through at the original offer price, which gives the landlord no opportunity to negotiate or make a counter offer. given that most original offer prices tend to be on the lower side – to encourage negotiation, if the freeholder misses the deadline it can prove very expensive indeed.

What Happens When the Parties Can’t Agree on a Price

If the freeholder does respond to the initial Enfranchisement Notice and starts to negotiate on price, but then the negotiations over the freehold price reaches stalemate, then the case can then be referred to an official body called the First-Tier Tribunal Property Chamber ( which was previously called the LVT or Leasehold Valuation Tribunal). This option is only open during a strict four month period which starts two months from the date the Counter Notice is issued, and ends six months after it is issued. Outside of this period the case cannot be referred to the Tribunal and the whole freehold purchase may fail.

Statutory Freehold Enfranchisement – failure to serve a counter notice

After the Enfranchisement Notice is served, the freeholder has a period of two months to come back with a Counter Notice. If this doesn’t happen, then they are deemed to have accepted the initial offer. If this happens, the leaseholders who are asking for collective enfranchisement can go ahead and legally purchase their freehold at whatever price they first offered. It is for this reason that freeholders have to stick to the deadlines and get their responses submitted in time – they face financial losses if they don’t.

The deadlines are there to ensure that the freehold purchase goes through as smoothly as possible, and to provide protection for both side. They also give people time to complete the tasks which need to be completed. All of these deadlines should be made clear by the start and you should make sure to stick to them if you don’t want to run the risk of ending up in the County Court to hear your freehold enfranchisement has been declared abandoned.

Looking at Statutory Freehold Enfranchisement ? Call Our Specialists

Exercising your Right to Enfranchise involves a really difficult of law  – so it’s critical that you get the right expert advice. Wherever your block is situated in England Wales, our specialist team can help.

Want to know more about how to buy your freehold? For a FREE initial phone consultation from a specialist Freehold Enfranchisement Solicitor

• Call us today on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 or
• email us using our contact form for FREE initial advice and a FREE quote.

Collective enfranchisement can be a long and drawn-out process, particularly if problems are encountered along the way. In life, different circumstances can crop up and mean that sometimes things have to take an about-turn. There may well be a situation in which you are wholeheartedly going along with an enfranchisement effort and a life event gets in the way which means that you have to sell your leasehold flat before the process is complete. These can cause some problems, but not ones which are unsurmountable.

Looking for Specialist Enfranchisement Advice? Call us now on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 for FREE Initial Phone Advice.

First stop – the participation agreement

A well-run freehold purchase project  will begin with a Participation Agreement, which obliges each participant to pay for their share of the freehold once the process is complete – and furthermore, that if they wish to sell their flat before the process is complete, that  must be to a buyer who agrees to take his or her place in the process of collective enfranchisement. Leasehold enfranchisement in itself doesn’t stop somebody from selling their flat, so long as there is a contingency plan in place, such as the one described above, in case the situation should arise.

This need not cause a problem, though. Indeed, the vast majority of prospective buyers will consider the flat to be far more attractive than another leasehold flat purely because they will get a share of the freehold and a 999-year lease at the end of the project, which they otherwise might not have had they bought another leasehold flat. So long as the Participation Agreement binds the residents to only sell to a buyer who contractually agrees to take their place in the collective enfranchisement process, it should cause no major headaches for those involved.

Click here to read more about Participation Agreements

The importance of the project manager

The project manager or organiser should ensure that they are put in direct contact with the buyer in order to ensure that they are privy to the same information and communication that the original resident was, and this should be done long before the sale of the flat is complete.

Once the sale of the flat has gone through, there’s very little the project manager or organiser can do if the new resident claims to know nothing about or not be interested in collective enfranchisement.

Having them sign the Participation Agreement or a contract engaging themselves in the process should they be the new owners of the flat will protect the whole process and ensure there are no hiccups along the way.

Enfranchisement and selling your flat – the need for specialist solicitor

To ensure the project isn’t derailed by the sale of a flat during the process, legal advice should be obtained and the services of a specialist solicitor with plenty of experience of enfranchisement should be sought. This will provide peace of mind to the other residents who are participating in buying the freehold of your block as well as ensuring that the terms of the Participation Agreement are kept to, with the new buyer actively engaging in the purchase of the freehold as the previous resident did.

Having this added legal protection is something which can prove hugely valuable, particularly if the new resident opts not to play ball after all.

Keep talking

Once again, communication is the key and conveying accurate information to all residents — as well as potential new residents — is of the utmost importance.

An experienced enfranchisement solicitor will be able to deal with the paperwork as well as ensuring that the correct legal advice is given to all the parties involved, making the chances of something going wrong much lower and protecting everybody involved with the collective enfranchisement effort.

As always, careful planning and organisation can forestall many problems before they even crop up and ensure that the project is completed smoothly and without any unexpected and unforeseen issues which might arise.

Problems with selling your flat while enfranchisement takes place? We can help

Our team of enfranchisement and lease extension specialists work closely with our property dispute litigators – so if you’re having a problem with buying your freehold or extending your lease, and think that it might require a Property Tribunal application, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And don’t forget we offer FREE initial phone advice.

Collective enfranchisement involves a really difficult of law  – so it’s so important that you get the right specialist advice. Wherever your block is situated in England and Wales, our expert team of lawyers can help. Enfranchisement and lease extensions is all they do.

Want to know more about how to buy your freehold? For a FREE initial phone consultation from a genuine specialist in Enfranchisement

• Call us today on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 or
• email us using our contact form for FREE initial advice and a FREE quote.

Specialist Lease Extension and Leasehold Enfranchisement Lawyers

The Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 gave leasehold owners of flats two important new rights. The first allows a majority of tenants to join together to buy the freehold, exercising the right to collective enfranchisement. The second allows an individual tenant the right to a new lease, for a term 90 years longer than the existing one at a peppercorn rent. In order to decide which route to follow a tenant will first have to assess whether they qualify for a collective claim and, if a collective claim is a possibility, will then need to decide whether the advantages of purchasing your freehold outweigh the benefits of a 90 year leasehold extension.

Looking for Specialist Lease Extension or Leasehold Enfranchisement Lawyers? Call us on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 for FREE Initial Phone Advice

Leasehold Reform update

The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 contained substantial reforms to both collective enfranchisement and lease extension. But none of those changes actually come into effect until the Act is implemented which may not happen until 2026.

There is just one exception – the abolition on January 31, 2025, of the two-year ownership rule, under which leaseholders had to wait for 2 years after buying the property before using the statutory route to extend their lease.

Tenants who are faced with the question of whether to enfranchise or seek a lease extension need to consider what their main objectives are. If they are suffering from bad management, unsubstantiated service charges and their leases are significantly longer than the statutory limit of 80 years then a collective Leasehold Enfranchisement claim will be of most benefit provided that they have an organised residents association.

On the other hand, if the leases are short or are about to reach the 80 year limit and they reside in a well managed block with numerous non-resident tenants a lease extension may be the better solution. In addition, with a collective claim, time can be an issue. If there are a significant number of tenants, it can take weeks or even months for them all to agree and sign up to the necessary documentation and to pay towards a fighting fund. In contrast, a single lease extension claim can sometimes be signed within a few days of a valuation being obtained –  if your freeholder is cooperative.

Leasehold enfranchisement following lease extension

It is also important to remember that these 2 options are not mutually exclusive.

It is possible for a tenant to extend a lease one year and then enter into a collective claim a few years later. The tenant’s extended lease will only serve to reduce the premium payable for the freehold.

Finally, tenants should also be aware that if the cost of the freehold is a problem it is possible to opt for forming a Right to Manage Company as a low cost solution to gaining control over the way that a building is run. And exercising your right to manage can be carried out alongside a lease extension.

Looking for specialist Leasehold Enfranchisement Lawyers? Contact us today

Wherever you live in the UK, for a FREE initial telephone consultation on your Freehold Enfranchisement or extending a lease,either

• Call us now on 0800 1404544, or

• Send us an email using the enquiry form below.