Absentee Freeholder

What can you do when your freeholder is missing?

For flats, the person responsible for matters like insurance, repairs and external maintenance is ordinarily the freeholder — so when the freeholder has disappeared, stopped responding or simply cannot be traced, flat owners are left with a building nobody is running. Buildings may suffer from neglect, especially when leaseholders struggle to agree how to manage things without a managing agent or freeholder, and there is often no one to insure the structure or collect for shared repairs.

Why a missing freeholder is a serious problem

Being lumbered with an absent freeholder also makes flats difficult to sell: buyers hesitate when they see that the management is poor or non-existent, and some mortgage providers refuse to lend altogether. The situation becomes more precarious as the remaining lease length shortens — leases below 85 years are already unattractive to lenders, and with no freeholder to negotiate with, the normal route to a lease extension appears blocked. It is not: the law anticipated exactly this situation.

Your legal remedies: vesting orders

Under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, individual flat owners can still extend their leases and groups of leaseholders can still buy the freehold even where the landlord cannot be found. The court can grant a vesting order — an order that allows the transaction to complete without the freeholder's participation — with the premium determined by the First-tier Tribunal on valuation evidence and the money paid into court to be held for the missing landlord. In practice this means the absence of the freeholder changes the procedure, not the outcome: you still end up with your 90-year lease extension at a peppercorn ground rent, or with the freehold vested in the leaseholders through collective enfranchisement.

Proving the freeholder cannot be found

Before granting a vesting order, the court expects evidence that reasonable efforts have been made to trace the landlord — checks against the registered title at HM Land Registry, enquiries at last known addresses, and often a professional tracing agent's report. Where the freeholder was a company that has since been dissolved, the freehold may have passed to the Crown as bona vacantia and a different procedure applies — the route changes, but a solution still exists. Your solicitor deals with the tracing evidence and the court application; the valuation evidence is where the surveyor comes in.

How the premium is decided

With no freeholder to negotiate with, there is no negotiation: the First-tier Tribunal determines the premium on the evidence before it. That makes the quality of the valuation decisive. A Registered Valuer on the panel prepares the statutory valuation — term, reversion and, for leases below 80 years under the regime currently in force, marriage value — supported by comparable evidence the Tribunal can rely on. For an early sense of the likely figure, the free Leasehold Calculator gives an instant estimate of a lease extension premium before you commit to the process.

What the panel provides

Our panel of valuers is experienced in leasehold reform and handles a significant number of cases each year, including absent-landlord claims for individual leaseholders, groups of flat owners, investors and property businesses alike. The valuer prepares the Red Book valuation for the Tribunal, and where a hearing is needed the panel's valuation expert witnesses present the evidence. We can also put you in touch with solicitors who deal with the vesting order application itself, so the legal and valuation strands run together.

Fees and timescales

Because the route runs through the court and the Tribunal rather than a private negotiation, absentee freeholder cases take longer than agreed claims — typically several months to a year depending on listing times — but they proceed to a conclusion whether or not the landlord ever surfaces. Valuation fees are fixed and quoted before you instruct. If you're looking for assistance in obtaining your lease extension or the ownership of your building despite a missing freeholder, contact us for guidance →