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Contact Freehold Sale to provide us with the address of the freehold you would like to sell. If possible, tell us how many leases there are, the terms of each lease and the ground rent payable. Don’t worry if you can’t find all of this information as we may be able to obtain copies of the leases.
We will carry out a market assessment to determine the value of your freehold ground rents. One of our freehold advisers will then contact you by telephone within 24-hours to provide you with a cash offer, which will also be confirmed to you in writing. Our purchase offers are valid for 14 days.
If you would like to proceed with the sale of your freehold interest, we will arrange to serve Section 5 Notices to the qualifying tenants on your behalf, saving you both time and legal costs. (As the freeholder, you are legally required to offer the Right of First Refusal to qualifying tenants – find out more below).
If you do not receive an acceptance from the required majority of qualifying tenants within the specified timeframe, we will instruct our solicitors to begin the legal process to acquire your freehold. On completion of the sale, you will receive your funds, in full via your solicitor.
As a freeholder, you’re typically responsible for insuring the building, collecting ground rent and service charges, managing maintenance, major works and service contracts. And with seemingly endless responsibilities, legal obligations, difficult and time consuming tasks, it really is enough to prompt anyone to sell their freehold. Moreover, it can simply be unfeasible to provide the time and dedication required for ongoing freehold management, particularly for those who have inherited their freehold. So, it’s no wonder that many people choose to sell freehold ground rents and relinquish themselves of the aggravation. Of course, there are also many freeholders who wish to sell in order to raise capital.
Whatever your reason may be for selling your freehold, Freehold Sale will provide you with a reliable service and stress-free sale process. We do this by drawing on our wealth of experience to make the freehold selling process as fast and simple as possible for our customers. In addition, we are able to provide you with expert advice and support delivered by our highly knowledgeable team. This means that you can sell your freehold ground rents with ease and peace of mind. Furthermore, our proficient sales support team will manage the entire sale transaction, so, it couldn’t be more straightforward to sell with Freehold Sale. We’ve already helped many individuals and companies like you to dispose of their freehold interest and release their capital quickly.
We buy residential freehold portfolios of all sizes and with varying lease terms and ground rents across England and Wales. Your freehold could include leasehold properties with peppercorn (zero) ground rents and short leases or modern, higher ground rents and long leases. We’ll buy freeholds of purpose-built blocks of flats or converted houses or buildings containing flats but NOT freeholds of houses. If there are existing problems with the freehold, such as ground rent or building insurance arrears, maintenance issues or ongoing disputes, we’ll buy these problems together with your freehold interest.
We aim to complete the transaction within four to six weeks of receiving a contract from your solicitor. The funds will be sent to you via your solicitor on completion. If your leaseholders (tenants) qualify for the Right of First Refusal, you will be required to serve them with Section 5A Notices. This Notice provides them with their legal right to collectively purchase the freehold interest before any other party. Leaseholders will have two months from the date of the Notice to accept the offer to purchase the freehold. To make your sale as easy as possible, we can prepare and serve the Section 5A Notices on your behalf at no cost to you.
Mr Malek - South East
Mr Malek contacted Freehold Sale to discuss selling the freehold to two blocks of flats with ground rents to 12 individual units. We carried out an appraisal of the freehold interest to determine the market value and proceeded to make Mr Malek a competitive offer to purchase. As with most of our clients, Mr Malek had been researching other freehold buying companies to obtain the best price for his freehold interest.
On receiving our offer, Mr Malek informed us that one of our well-known competitors in the industry had made him an offer which was significantly larger than ours. Regrettably, we were all too familiar with this company’s practices having had many clients inform us of their terrible experience. We advised Mr Malek to approach this company with caution as they are renowned for making attractively high offers and then withdrawing from the transaction before reaching exchange of contracts.
Unfortunately, Mr Malek decided to proceed with the offer from our competitor freehold buyer, only to be let down several weeks after. During this time, Mr Malek had paid a significant sum of money for a solicitor to serve the Section 5 Right of First Refusal Notices to his qualifying tenants. As Mr Malek was still keen to sell the freehold interest, he contacted Freehold Sale again to accept our initial purchase offer.
We were more than happy to help Mr Malek, however, as our offer was lower than the purchase price that was stated in the distributed Right of First Refusal Notices, new notices would have to be served to the qualifying tenants. Fortunately, we provide this service to all of our clients at no cost, so Mr Malek didn’t incur any further expenses. However, we do advise our clients that in some circumstances they may not be able to re-issue the Section 5 Notices within 12 months of issuing the original Notices.
Therefore, while obtaining the best sale price is the ultimate aim for most people, it is always advisable to carefully select a freehold buyer that you can trust. Reading company reviews and ensuring that they have a great reputation with their customers can be a good indication of this. Otherwise, you could end up out of pocket and stuck with owning your freehold ground rents and managing all the responsibilities that come with it for a further 12 months.
Mr Bolton - Midlands
Mr Bolton approached Freehold Sale looking to sell his freehold ground rents quickly. He had inherited the property (a house conversion containing three flats with ground rental income) just one year previously. The property was not in a good state of repair and with troublesome tenants to contend with, Mr Bolton had reached the end of his tether with being a landlord and wanted to get out as soon as possible.
Mr Bolton was very honest with the problems he was experiencing with his freehold property. One of the main issues was that his leaseholders were failing to pay their ground rent and service charges, which meant that he couldn’t arrange the necessary repairs and maintenance for the property. When Mr Bolton inherited the property, the leaseholders were already in arrears and this had continued to increase over the past year.
Consequently, many freehold buyers refused to make Mr Bolton an offer for his freehold ground rents, which left him extremely concerned that he would not be able to sell the freehold at all. At Freehold Sale however, we’re experienced in buying freehold properties with existing problems and arrears, so we were happy to help Mr Bolton with transfer of his freehold interest.
Ultimately, Mr Bolton wanted to achieve a quick sale of the freehold without losing too much money on the sale price as a result. At Freehold Sale, we always offer a competitive price to buy a freehold based on the market value of the property. This means that we do not offer a lower purchase price in return for a quick sale. After carrying out a valuation of Mr Bolton’s freehold ground rents, we provided him with an offer to purchase.
As Freehold Sale specialise in helping freeholders to sell their freeholds quickly, we were confident that we could complete the transaction in four – six weeks. Mr Bolton was extremely pleased with this fact in addition to the purchase offer, and so instructed us to proceed with the freehold transfer. After serving the Right of First Refusal Notices to the qualifying tenants on Mr Bolton’s behalf at no cost to him, we were able to complete the sales transaction in just four weeks.
To help you to fulfil your legal obligations when selling your freehold, we offer a Section 5 Notice service, which is available to you at no cost. You can take advantage of our free Section 5 Notice service when you sell your freehold ground rents to us or even if you’re selling to another party.
What is the Right of First Refusal?
In most cases, when you sell your freehold ground rents you have a legal obligation to offer any qualifying tenants (leaseholders) the Right of First Refusal (ROFR). ROFR is offered by way of an official notice named Section 5 and is provided by Part 1 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987. Failure to serve the Section 5 Notice and comply with the legal requirements of the Act can result in a criminal conviction and a fine of up to £5000. You will also have to undo the sale transaction and bear all the costs for doing so.
Our aim is to make selling a freehold fast and simple for our customers and we can do this because we are expert freehold buyers, with a wealth of experience.