Paying Rent
Post – You may send a cheque or postal order to us by post. If you would like us to provide a receipt at no charge, you will need to supply a stamped, self addressed envelope with your payment.
Phone – You may pay by debit or credit card over the phone. This will incur a surcharge of 0.00% with a minimum of £0.00 per transaction.
Internet – You may pay over the internet by debit or credit card by
clicking here. There is no surcharge for payment over the internet by card.
Our legal remedies for non payment of ground rent and rent charge are extensive and include actions which may threaten your security on the property as well as against the individual responsible for non payment. This means that, if you have recently moved in, you remain liable to pay all outstanding rent in order to protect your interest in the property. Obviously, all rent arrears should have been settled when you bought the property. Therefore, if you have any issues with rent owing for periods prior to your purchase, you should contact the solicitor or licensed conveyancer who acted for you in your purchase of the property.
If we do have to chase unpaid rent, we will incur costs, which we will recover where the lease or rent charge deed or statute permits. We also reserve the right to inform any bank or building society which owns a charge on property for which ground rent or rent charge remains unpaid. In such circumstances, the bank or building society may well add their own administration charges to your mortgage.
If you are paying rent for other properties as well as your own, we may be prepared to take over your interest in the other properties and reduce your individual rent accordingly. If you are interested in this option, please contact us by
clicking here.
Notice of Transfer/ Mortgage
We charge a minimum fee of £125.00 (no V.A.T.) for each notice. The fee covers the service of registering, receipting and returning of notice . If the notice is not paid, the notice will not be dealt with (i.e. a receipted notice will not be returned). Types of notice we process include:
Transfer
Assignment
Mortgage
Discharge of Mortgage
Vacating receipt
Consent to Assign
The minimum fee for dealing with a formal consent or license to assign is £125.00 (no VAT).
Consent for Alterations
Where the lease or rent charge deed stipulates that you need our consent for alterations, then, if you plan to carry out alterations in the future, you will need our written consent prior to commencement of the works (i.e. prospective consent); if the alterations have already been carried out, our retrospective consent will be required. In all cases involving our consent for alterations, we will need confirmation that:-
We will be fully indemnified from any third party claims; and
Planning permission either has been obtained or is not required.
Our fee will vary from case to case. However, for guidance purposes only, in the case of an addition of an average size single storey alteration we would normally charge £225.00 (no VAT). For a two storey alteration we would normally charge £250.00 (no VAT).
If you require a quote for our fees for granting consent, please write to us enclosing details of the alteration.
Copy of Lease/ Rent Charge Deed
If you require a copy of a lease or rent charge deed, please send us 2 separate cheques, each for £55.00 (no VAT). One cheque will cover the search of our Deed Store. The other cheque covers the photocopying charges once we locate the relevant document. If we can’t find the document, we’ll return the second cheque. We will carry out the search within 7 days of receipt of the cheques. If you want it done within 24 hours, please send an additional £25.00 (no VAT) as an expedition fee.
Request for Information
If you wish us to fill out a Questionnaire please let us have a copy in order to quote you a fee for providing the information. If you want information about matters not already covered above (e.g. breaches of lease covenants), please write stating what you want to know and we will quote you a fee for providing the information.
Buildings Insurance
Where the Lease or Rent Charge Deed requires us to approve the Buildings Insurance policy we charge a fee of £49.00 (no VAT).
Buying our Freehold interest
There are a number of benefits in buying the freehold:-
Your home becomes more valuable.
You are no longer bound by the covenants in the Lease. These could include restrictions on whether you can alter your property or where you can place your buildings insurance..
You no longer have to pay ground rent..
A future sale of your house should be more straightforward and less costly.
If you are interested in buying our freehold interest in your property, please write or e.mail us asking for a quote: This is done without creating any obligation on either side. The quote will be inclusive of any unpaid rent. We will hold the quoted price for 28 days. Our quote assumes that your current use of the property (usually as a single private dwelling house) will continue and that there are no existing breaches of the lease. Our price is inclusive of all our costs and legal fees.
It is your choice whether you use a solicitor or deal with us direct. If you deal with us direct, we can prepare all the paperwork; this includes the deed transferring the freehold interest from us to you and the application to the Land Registry to register the freehold in your name.
Buying a our freehold interest- one off payment
We will ask you in the letter containing the quote whether you wish to purchase with a single payment or to spread the cost by paying 6 equal monthly installments. If you wish to purchase with a one-off payment, we will require (when you write back to accept the quote) a cheque for the full amount made payable to HMCC Securities Ltd. You will then need to allow about 2 weeks before we get the transfer documentation back to you and a further period of up to 5 weeks when you have returned the signed transfer to us and we have submitted all of the documentation and registration fees to the Land Registry.
Buying our Leasehold Interest
On occasions, the interest which we own is leasehold and not freehold. This means that we collect ground rent from you but we ourselves have to pay ground rent to our landlord (usually the freeholder). If you buy our leasehold interest, you will then be bound by the covenants in the head lease, rather than your existing lease. This may mean that you will still continue to be liable for the payment of ground rent.
If you do wish to purchase our leasehold interest, the process of buying and method of payment are the same as set out above for buying a freehold interest.
Buying our Rent charge interest
There are a number of benefits in buying our rent charge interest:-
Your home becomes more valuable
You are no longer bound by the covenants in the rent charge deed. These could include restrictions on whether you can alter your property or where you can place your buildings insurance.
You no longer have to pay the rent stipulated in the rent charge deed
A future sale of your home should be more straightforward
Buying our Rent charge interest- Our quote
If you are interested in buying our rent charge interest in your property, please write or e.mail us asking for a quote: this is done without creating any obligation on either side. Our quote assumes that your current use of the property (usually as a single private dwelling house) will continue and that there are no existing breaches of the terms of the rent charge deed