Posts Tagged money
Reasons For An Extended Lease
Posted on July 25, 2011 | Real Estate Law.
Getting an extension on a lease is a benefit to most leaseholders and therefore is something which is seriously worth considering. Under statute you have the legal right to get an extension on your lease for up to 90 years (Leasehold Reform Act 1993). Once this extension is granted, you are no longer liable to pay ground rent to your landlord. This article discusses the benefits of getting an extension on your lease.
One of the main reasons you should think about extending a lease is because as your lease decreases, so does the value of your property. If you have a very long lease (such as one that lasts for more than 100 years) then this will make little difference to the value of your property, but once that number starts to go down, then the money you can expect to make on the flat or house will also decrease. This is why extending a lease is encouraged.
Another reason to consider an extended lease as soon as you can is to avoid having to pay what is called marriage value. This is charged on leasehold extensions where the original lease has less than eighty years to run, so it is definitely in your interests as the leaseholder to start the application process as soon as you can. As long as you have owned the property for two years and your original lease had at least 21 years on it, you will be eligible to apply.
Also, if you think that you are going to want to sell your property in the future, then you should give some thought to an extended lease. This is because it can be harder to sell your property on if the lease has less than 60 years to run as mortgage lenders are more likely to view it sceptically. So, not only will a short lease make it harder for you to find a buyer for the property, but even if you do then your buyer is likely to find it tricky to get a mortgage to complete the deal.
Finally, extending a lease can give you peace of mind as it means you won’t have to worry about what will happen if you are still living in the property when the lease runs out. It makes overall good sense, so if you are interested in an extended lease, get in touch with a specialist solicitor.
Real Estate Law and China’s Property Bubble Discussed
Posted on June 27, 2011 | Real Estate Law.
Even though the global economic crisis has ended, and the recession in the United States seems to have ended, and as we move towards a very slow recovery, still we are not out of the woods yet when it comes to real estate. And our authorities who are engaged in regulating the banks and the industry are not done getting to the bottom of which companies caused the problem either. In fact, they are still out investigating some of the largest corporations and banks in America.
Likewise, with huge number of foreclosure cases in the court system it is compounding the problem. Some banks are paying hundreds of million dollars in fines for filing foreclosure papers through contracted legal firms without the proper paperwork. But if you think real estate law in the United States is complicated after the last recessionary economic crisis, you’d be very interested to know that we are not alone here in our country. In fact, after the global economic crash the United States and China both spent huge amounts of money in stimulus to prop up their economies.
In China the central bank lent money to regional banks and municipal vehicles to prop up the construction industry, and a lot of that money went into real estate projects. People invested in these projects; apartments, business buildings, factories, and all sorts of other projects, and China created a real estate bubble due to all the money that was poured in. Unfortunately most of that money will never be recouped, and many of those loans have already gone bad, and those local banks are trying to hide the fact.
Meanwhile, everyone who invested is watching the property values drop like a rock, and they are losing most of the money they thought they had gained as the bubble got bigger and bigger. Will those people be able to sue the government for creating this property bubble, or the banks for propping up or even misrepresenting what was going on? No, in China you’re not allowed to sue the government, and they don’t have the same types of real estate laws that we have here.
Unfortunately, there were many investment banks from the United States which also got in on the action, and actually helped increase the building of that bubble, some of which have already gotten their money out, and others still have their money in and they are losing it. Those wealthy investors involved will also lose millions of dollars along with the hundreds of millions, in some cases billions of dollars being lost by US-based investment banks. Perhaps what the world needs is some international real estate laws that everyone can agree to globally. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.