Neighbour Nightmare... Legal help needed

[Monopoly31]

I'm caught in a bit of a nightmare with my neighbour, who also happens to be the freeholder.

I recently put our flat on the market and received an offer quite quickly as I wanted to move before my daughter started school. So far , so good. However when I asked my neighbour to fill in the necessary form needed, as she is freeholder, things took a bit of a turn for the worse. We've always been on speaking terms and out of the blue received a letter from her solicitors saying that we had broken the agreements of our lease, and that there was a number of outstanding issues that would need to be resolved before she could possibly sign.

She mentioned building works that had never been mentioned or discussed but yet my partner & I did some in order to appease the situation and hopefully make her sign the forms.

Alas 3 months later, she has now decided she has damp and that the roof is the problem and she wants a specialist in , that we have to pay for.

The buyer is getting frustrated and we are in very real danger of them pulling out , if our freeholder doesn't sign the papers soon. However the freeholder is being obstructive and finds more and more issues that we seem to be paying for.

Can anyone give any advice as I really don't know what to do

[Blueskies]

Leasehold advisory service (Google them) are useful and I'm fairly sure they have a helpline, good luck.

[hazelnunhead]

I would second Blueskies recommendation of contacting the advisory service. I think as a leaseholder there should be something within your leasehold about what you pay monthly (to overall upkeep etc) and the expectations from both parties.

I can empathise with you, we sold a flat in north London which was part of a leasehold, and also had to extend the lease before selling ..... we also got "hit" with a very large bill of sudden works that had to be done! We ended up with a completely redecorated building etc (unfortunately after we had agreed a sale, so no increase in price for us) and we had to foot the bill.