Freeholders refuse to share surveyors report?

Buying into the freehold will not make your flat freehold it will remain a leasehold with you becoming a joint freeholder.
The only real benefit is that your lease can be extended, usually to 999 years for £0 plus your legal costs and you needn't do this till you want to sell. Also many joint freeholders do not pay the ground rent in their lease and this too can be varied when extended.
Any survey is the property of the person(s) who paid for it. Is the offer to purchase a freehold share being given to the other non-joint freeholder? Why not get your own survey so you know what you are letting yourself in for re maintenance costs? Won't make the costs any cheaper but will highlight what needs doing in the near to medium future.

Hi Jasmin

I was a freeholder in a near identical situation a few years ago.

Firstly, I suggest you speak to a surveyor who is an expert in leasehold acquisition/extension. The following are just my thoughts and although I have some experience I am not an expert:

I suspect that even if you and the other leaseholder serve notice on the freeholder together you cannot compel them to sell you a share (or the entire freehold) as you are not a majority. However, you can compel them to grant you a extension. In the scenario you would need to instruct a solicitor to serve a notice on the freehold. You would then be responsible for the freehold’s expenses in serving a counter notice and also their surveyor’s valuation fee. As far as I can recall, they are under no obligation to show you this valuation report. You would then instruct your own surveyor to do a valuation for you and if necessary negotiate on your behalf with the freehold surveyor to agree a price. If no agreement is reached you can take the matter to a tribunal but this will be very rare except in high value situations (occasionally happens in central London et cetera).

What is obvious to you by now, I’m sure, is that the professional costs in this procedure can very quickly overtake the value of the freehold extension itself. There are some online tools available for very simple valuation of lease extensions and this might give you some parameters. However, I suggest you get a surveyor to do a valuation for you and if this suggests that the asking price from the freehold is reasonable, then just go for it.

I hope this helps.

K

The point is whether they can pay for it with service charge money and I think the answer is probably not. The lease outlines what can be paid from service charges and it is trust money for the benefit of the leaseholders, valuing the freehold is unlikely to qualify on either count. They can pay for it with ground rent money though as that belongs to them.

Contact the surveyor and explain how it was paid for. They will either give permission for you to see it or hopefully get the freeholder to reimburse the service charge fund or explain to you why not.

It is quite normal for a surveyor to state that their advice is for the use of the client only and is not to be shared with third parties unless by prior agreement.

If the advice was shared more broadly and relied upon, that could increase the surveyors liability, which is unreasonable.

In addition the surveyor is advising on the freeholder’s perspective, not the leaseholder’s perspective, and in any negotiations it would be usual for both parties to take independent advice.

However, unless the lease provides otherwise, the freeholder should not be using the service charge funds to pay for the surveyors report – with the possible exception that the surveyor is acting as an independent arbiter between the parties - which does not appear to be the case here - but as you have paid for it, it does not seem an unreasonable request to see it. I suspect the report has given a range of values
giving scope for negotiation, and the freeholder does wish you to see the whole contents.

Generally, and simplistically, the service charge is to be used for services across the whole of the development and not to pay for matters arising from the differing interests of freeholder and leaseholder.

It seems that both the freeholders (and leaseholders) need to obtain independent advice on how to enfranchise (acquire the freehold), as from what’s written here, neither party appears to have an understanding of the process, including provisions for leaseholders to pay freeholders costs for enfranchisement in appropriate circumstances.

I suggest you look at the lease-advice.org website which should help point you in the right direction.

Good luck.