headlease

The Treasury Solicitor can make an offer - subject to contract until completion - to sell the headlease.

For more information, see the page in this guide on information required for buying a headlease.

However, this does not affect your right to demand payment of arrears from the other tenants if you buy the headlease.

If the dissolved company was the landlord of your flat, it probably owned either the freehold or the headlease for the building.

In these cases, the usual practice is to offer to sell the freehold or the headlease to the tenants jointly.

If the Treasury Solicitor does make an offer to sell the headlease, completion of the sale must take place within the time period prescribed.

It may be necessary to obtain the freeholder's consent before the headlease can be transferred.

They are only required when there is a grant of a headlease or a transfer of a freehold subject to more than one lease.

The rent due under the headlease will usually be a basic rent plus a percentage of the subrents.

To apply to buy the headlease, you should complete and return the Details of Tenancies form, with as much information as possible.

Although not legally bound to do so, they will usually make an offer to sell the headlease to all the tenants who wish to buy jointly.

Some subleases reserve a rent which is linked to the rent payable under the headlease.

If the property has tenants, the usual practice of the Treasury Solicitor is to offer the freehold (or headlease) to the tenants to buy.

The right to sub-lease can be expressly prohibited by the headlease, that is to say main lease, sometimes referred to as a "master lease".

Therefore the purchase price for the headlease title is £1,000, as this is the minimum price for any ownerless property or 'bona vacantia'.

This means that when the Treasury Solicitor sells the headlease, they do not give any guarantee or assurance that they have the legal right to sell it.

If you want to go ahead with the purchase of the headlease where the formula price applies, you should provide the Treasury Solicitor with the following information:

The Treasury Solicitor uses a formula to calculate the purchase price for the headlease of residential property vested as ownerless property or 'bona vacantia'.

It will clearly be in the interest of the headtenant if the service charge is left out of account for the purposes of the rent review under the headlease.

Before the Treasury Solicitor can consider making an offer to sell a headlease, they must be sure that the company owned it at the time that it was dissolved.

Thirdly, he may provide that for the purposes of the rent review under the headlease, the sublet property shall be deemed to be let at a rack rent.

If the headlease is disclaimed, the Treasury Solicitor will send a copy of the formal notice of disclaimer to all interested parties of whom they are aware.

If a company that owns the headlease of a building is dissolved, that headlease will pass to the Crown as ownerless property or 'bona vacantia'.

A headlease is usually for a longer term than the subleases as it is a breach of contract to grant a longer sublease than the headlease.

If the tenants were the former members of the dissolved company they may be able to restore the company to the register, which may be cheaper than buying the headlease from the Crown.