Humber Road, Dartford, Kent, DA1

Ideally located for Dartford town centre and station Robinson Jackson are delighted to offer for sale this very well presented two bedroom apartment that benefits from being share of freehold.

Exterior
Parking: The property benefits from an allocated parking space.
Garden: There are communal garden spaces surrounding the building.

Key Terms
The property is share of freehold.
Lease - 88 years.
Service charge £2389 per annum.
The property measures 573 square feet.
Council tax Dartford band C £2027 2025 -26.
The current owner has lived in the property for 5 years.
The current owner will be purchasing another property.
The property is conventional construction.
The property is located on the ground floor.
The property benefits from an allocated parking space.
The property has mains electric, water and drainage.
The property has a valid fire risk assessment.
The estimated rental figure for this property is £1450 per Calander month.

What does share of freehold mean?
If you purchase a flat that has a ‘share of freehold’ it means that you will not only own your flat, but also a share of the freehold of the building.
This ownership of the freehold will be shared with other people that also own a share of the freehold. Owning a share of freehold will generally give you more control over the block of flats and can allow you to have a say in how it’s being run. This means that you won’t have a potentially exploitative landlord telling you what to do.

How does share of freehold work?
If you own a share in the freehold, you have a shared obligation (with your fellow freehold-shareholders) to undertake the responsibilities of the freeholder of the building (such as maintaining the condition of the building). Those obligations are set in both the flat leases themselves and in general laws relating to residential blocks/buildings containing flats.
Those who own the freehold, but don’t want to take on extra work can appoint a managing agent to deal with these responsibilities. Leases often provide that such managing agent costs are to be paid for by the owners between them.

The difference between a share of freehold property and just a leasehold is that someone that owns just the leasehold (also known as the leaseholder) only leases their flat (for a fixed period of time) and has no say in relation to the building in general. Whereas someone who also owns a share of the freehold not only leases their flat but also has some outright shared-ownership of the building, over the property and its land.

If you own a share of the freehold, you have a say in how the property is managed. If you only own the leasehold, you don’t and answer to the landlord/freeholder.

Do I need to extend my lease if I own a share of the freehold?
Even if you co-own your freehold (also known as ‘share of the freehold’) your flat lease will still exist; you will still own a leasehold flat, but with the added benefit of a share in the freehold. Mortgage lenders and future buyers will still want the lease to be extended, regardless of the fact that the flat benefits from part-ownership of the freehold.

Why do I need to extend my lease if I own a share of the freehold?
The main reason for this is because your lease is the ‘contract’ which governs what goes on in the building and, for example, what proportion each flat contributes towards the building’s maintenance and insurance etc. If the lease did not exist, none of this would be regulated and lenders would not be happy to lend against the flat. Also, the reality is that, if the lease ran all the way down to zero days, you would have to move out and hand the flat back to the ‘freeholder’. As such, a lease extension would be required to ensure that the lease never gets that short.

How to extend your lease if you own a share of the freehold and what is the cost of extending lease on share of freehold?
As you would effectively be granting a lease extension to yourself (as freeholder, to leaseholder), there would usually be no premium (‘price’) payable for the extension, other than the legal costs and Land Registry expenses involved.
Do freehold-owners have to agree to your lease extension? All other freehold-owners must be in agreement to your proposed extension; although they don’t all necessarily need to extend their leases at the same time. Their involvement/co-operation in the transaction may be required, depending on how the freehold title is held at the Land Registry. It would be usual for a freehold-owner’s lease to be extended to 999-years with the ground rent officially being reduced to a ‘peppercorn’ (a legal term for nothing at all); albeit, you will not likely have been paying yourselves ground rent anyway.