Leaseholder rights
Advice
Rights as a leaseholder
As the leaseholder, you have more rights than you might think. A wide range of rights are set out in the legislation and advice is readily available. However, where a dispute arises, the first step should be to ask the landlord or managing agent for full details or an explanation.
Your rights include
- Information: your freeholder must provide their name and a contact address within England or Wales which must be stated on every demand for ground rent and service charges;
- Consultation on major (qualifying) works: the freeholder should not carry out major works to your building, costing you more than £250 without first adequately consulting you; and
- Challenging service, you can challenge the reasonableness of expenses arising from the lease in addition to the service charge.
Buying the freehold: you and other leaseholders who satisfy certain conditions can get together and enforce the sale of the freehold by the leaseholder to you, with the price being agreed between the parties. You would also have the right of first refusal, in most cases, where the freeholder proposes to sell the freehold, he must offer it to the leaseholders first. (There are some exceptions to this requirement involving housing associations and local authorities).
How we can help
Lestons can intervene and discuss options with you to resolve the matter. To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link. Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.