story of a london flat - part 1

no. 46 hamilton terrace is a "charming split level maisonette on one of st. john's wood's finest tree lined roads, requiring modernisation" the ad reads on the property website. the house is in our neighbourhood, and i found it searching the web for 2-bedroom flats in the summer. the london housing market has taken a downturn since about january, but this flat, sorry, this maisonette would still be considered a "desres", a desirable piece of property, especially as it was on the market for 375,000 pounds. bargain! there was only one catch: the flat came with a 7-year lease.
if you, like me, are illiterate in english property-speak, a 7-year lease means that the leaseholder would "buy" (lease, really) the flat for 7 years. after that time the freeholder (who owns the ground the property stands on or the building it is contained in) would take it back and draw up a new lease contract. with no compensation to the leaseholder. most english flats are sold with a lease for 99 years, some even have 999 years, and i've heard of 25-year leases considered short. imagine 7! no wonder, therefore, that the flat had not sold since february. a bit of research on my part uncovered that the current owner had bought the place only last summer, for 300,000 pounds and with an 8-year lease. what were they thinking?! speculating on rising prices? bad luck. and why put it on the market now? was it panic? had greed turned into need?
who knows. fact is, 2 agents were offering the flat, probably even more, without much success. by august, the asking price had dropped to 335,000 pounds. the next attempt to get rid of the doomed flat was initiated. the owner put it up for auction.