Your Right to Enfranchise - How to Serve the Initial Notice

Are you panicking? Don't! Although it is important that you take care to make sure that the initial notice is complete, by checking it and re-checking it. You might be able to amend some mistakes later on, but you will have to pay, so try to avoid making any to start with by paying attention to detail.

It is good to know that your group of enfranchising tenants can be protected by the right to register the initial notice with the Land Registry. This will protect you from the landlord selling the freehold. So the process continues as if the new owner had received the initial notice for the leasehold enfranchisement.

When you serve the initial notice, the valuation date is fixed to the same date. This is the date on which everything affecting the price of the freehold is set: the remaining years left on the leases, the present values of the flats and their assumed future value. This will give you the peace of mind that your negotiation will be based on the original factors, no matter how long it takes.

When reaching this point in leasehold enfranchisement, a solicitor who is highly experienced in exercising the right to franchise will be of great help and should ease the burden considerably.

What do you do if, after all reasonable efforts, the landlord cannot be found? Well, there will be no reason to panic; the leasehold enfranchisement process can continue with this issue resolved in other ways:

- if the landlord was a company which has ceased to trade, its property may have passed to the Crown through the Treasury Solicitor. Seek them out: they should be prepared to sell the freehold to the enfranchising tenants at open market value. You have to do this by negotiating, and you don't have to serve the initial notice.

- you can serve the initial notice on the receiver if the landlord is a company that is in receivership; in the same way, if the owner has declared bankruptcy, you can serve the notice on the bankruptcy trustee.

- if you are unable to find the landlord then you cannot serve the initial notice. In this case, the tenants may make application to the County Court for a vesting order.

If the Court is happy with the process, the freehold will be sold to the tenants who are entering into a right to enfranchise in the landlord's absence. It may take a turn of events to achieve but that is exactly why you need a solicitor who specialises in leasehold enfranchisement to guide you.