Unrealised Usefulness of Your Lease

Unrealised Usefulness of Your Lease

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Overview

Many people who own leasehold properties often do not realise that the Lease itself is an important third member of the Title Documents triplet. In this article we briefly examine some of the benefits we can muster from reading through the Lease.

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Horizontal Boundaries

Some leases will provide precise detail of where a horizontal boundary lies. The following is an extract taken from a modern lease:

All those premies known as Unit 12B Uphill Street, Exeter shown edged red on Plan 1 and for identification purposes only edged red on Plan 2. The premises include:

(a)   the floor and ceiling finishes, including raised floors and false ceilings, but not any other part of the floor slabs and ceiling slabs that bound the premises;

(b)   the inner half severed medially of the internal non load-bearing walls dividing the premises from any other premises;

(c)   The conducting media exclusively serving the premises

but excluding the roof and the roof space of the building, the foundations of the building, all external structural or load-bearing walls, columns, beams and supports of the building, and any of the conducting media that do not exclusively serve the premises.

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Allocated Car Parking Space

The Lease will usually describe with precision where your allocated car parking space is, and this is normally shown in a plan (Lease Plan) attached to the Lease. This is the case with most modern leases, although many of the older leases will not have such detail.

In the sample Lease Plan below the car parking space is highlighted with red edging on the top left of the image, the bin store at the top right of the image and the flat itself at the right of the image.

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Allocated Bin Store

The Lease Plan often shows the allocated bin store, as shown in the image below.

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Shared Gardens

The Lease would normally spell out which of the leasehold flat owners can access the gardens or which section of the gardens. It will also set out any rights and burdens you may have with regard thereto. Ownership of the gardens may belong to the freeholders of the whole building or it may belong to all or some of the leaseholders. The Lease is the document you should turn to in order to identify your rights and obligations in regard to the gardens.

Obtain Lease

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