Selling your flat

Remember that whereas you may 'own' the lease for a particular unit within Augustus Court, you do so only with the consent of the Augustus Court freeholder, Abbotdeal, subject to your compliance with the terms, conditions & covenants within the legal lease agreement that you have with Abbotdeal.

You are required under those covenants to keep Abbotdeal and Termstake, and so therefore your fellow shared freeholders, informed of changes relating to your unit that you wish to make before you commit to them taking place.

As a legal document, your lease can be bought and sold on the open housing market. By selling your lease you are, in effect, selling that temporary right (the leasehold) to occupy that part of the building defined within your lease for the remaining part of its agreement, i.e. what is left from the original 125 years. The decision to sell is yours but there are conditions with which you must comply in order to proceed. The sale of a lease or the transfer of ownership of a lease involves not only the parties affected directly (former owner and new owner) but also the freeholder and national & official agencies.

The purchase or sale or other form of transfer of any lease includes the cancellation/reissue of the associated share in Abbotdeal and the equivalent share in Termstake. No sale or transfer will be considered or recorded as complete unless all the items have been processed as required. If selling your lease then the following administrative & legal processes must be followed in all cases.

When you have made the decision to sell, you are required to notify Abbotdeal of this in written form. This is one of the covenants in your lease agreement. Part of the legal process of transferring a lease from one party to another involves the landlord (Abbotdeal) issuing a Licence to Assign authorising the transfer to proceed. Abbotdeal will not withhold issuing the Licence on unreasonable grounds but your solicitor must ensure that the Licence is obtained. If your solicitor believes that this is unnecessary or not required then s/he is incorrect. This is a mandatory step for Augustus Court. No licence, no authorisation, no transfer, no sale.

The Notification needs to be sent to the Managing Agent (see Contact page) and will only be accepted if it has been sent by the leaseholder registered with Abbotdeal for the flat. The only exception to this is in the case of the death of a leaseholder when the Notification will be accepted from an authorised family member or solicitor. This Notification must be in written form - either in the form of a letter or by email (managing.agent@augustus-court.co.uk).

As part of the Notification please ensure the following details are included:

Name of the current owner/leaseholder
Address of the unit to be sold
Name, address, telephone no. and DX address of your appointed solicitor
Name, address, telephone and contact name for any estate agencies to be used - whether high street based or online
Name, current contact details of intended new owner (if known at this stage)

Until you have received written acknowledgement in return from the Managing Agent, no estate agent advertising boards are permitted to be displayed. In most cases permission will be granted as part of the acknowledgement but this cannot be assumed. If there are too many such boards (for sale or to let) on display at the same time then permission will not necessarily be given. If you are using more than one estate agent then only one board may be displayed for each unit being sold. The Managing Agent is authorised by the Directors to:

decline permission to display estate agency boards where deemed necessary, and
request the removal of any boards - removal to be done within 48 hours of notice.

Of particular importance, no boards must be nailed to any part of the front boundary/retaining wall. It is typical practice for agencies to do this. Even if they use sub-contractors it is still the agency’s responsibility. Nailing signs into the bricks or the mortar between the bricks weakens the wall structure. Any boards used must be free-standing or tied to the brick pillar. Please ensure your agency understands it must remove the board within 14 days of completion of sale.

The Managing Agent will supply you with the details of Abbotdeal's solicitor with whom your own solicitor will need to liaise throughout the sale process. He can also advise on the processes that need to be followed, any outstanding charges or fees that require settlement before completion and the minimum costs you will incur for the sale transaction.

Your solicitor must ensure that all the conditions of the lease are respected and that the sale of it is packaged with the transfer of the associated share in Abbotdeal and the associated share in Termstake. The items cannot be sold or transferred separately or independently of each other. If your two Termstake and Abbotdeal shares are not surrendered in the required manner then the counterpart lease held by Abbotdeal's solicitors will not be reassigned to the new owner and you will remain responsible financially for all subsequent rent notices and charges until that has been done.

Please ensure that the name(s) and contact details (that's both email and mobile numbers) of the new owners are made known to the Managing Agent as soon as they are known and confirmed, i.e. before the new owner moves in.