Blakes is a firm of Chartered Surveyors and RICS Registered Valuers based in Raynes Park, south-west London. We have been advising leaseholders, freeholders and their professional advisers since 2013.
Our core work is leasehold reform — lease extensions and collective enfranchisement — where we have handled over 20,000 lease renewals across nearly every type of building, landlord and lease length. Alongside that we prepare Red Book valuations for probate, inheritance tax, capital gains tax, matrimonial proceedings, company accounts and the Charity Commission, and we carry out pre-purchase surveys for buyers across London and the South East.
We act for private clients directly, and for the solicitors, executors, accountants and financial institutions who instruct us on their clients’ behalf.
Blakes is regulated as a practice by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, RICS firm registration number 752265. Our valuers are RICS Registered Valuers. We are members of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners and registered practitioners with the government-sponsored Leasehold Advisory Service. We hold professional indemnity insurance with £1,000,000 of cover on an each-and-every-claim basis.
We are not estate agents, and we do not take sale instructions. What we do is advise on the right route to market. Every property and every seller is different: some are best placed with a local agent who genuinely knows the street, others belong in an auction room, and occasionally the answer is not to buy or sell at all this year.
We work with agents and auction houses across London and the South East, and we will introduce you to the ones suited to your particular property. Because we take no commission on the sale, our advice on the route is independent of who ends up handling it.
Valuation is only half of a leasehold claim. We work alongside Arcadia Law, a firm of regulated solicitors, so the valuation and the legal work run together rather than in sequence.
Through extension.lease we offer the whole process as a single packaged service — one fee, one point of contact — which for a single flat is usually the simplest and most cost-effective route.
Director
Chartered Surveyor and RICS Registered Valuer with twenty years’ experience across surveying and valuation, property management, lettings and agency, investment and property law. Leads the practice’s leasehold reform and formal valuation work and gives expert evidence before the First-tier Tribunal and the courts.
Associate Director
Leads the practice’s collective enfranchisement work, handling freehold purchase claims from qualification and initial appraisal through to settlement, including the apportionment of the premium between participating leaseholders.
Associate Director
Leads on group lease extensions, coordinating valuations across a block, managing negotiation with the landlord’s surveyor and keeping each participant informed of where their own claim stands.
Consultant Chartered Building Surveyor
Chartered Building Surveyor with over fifteen years’ experience, advising on condition, defects and building surveys across residential and commercial property.
Business Development Manager
Twenty years’ experience in valuation, agency and construction management across residential and commercial property. Usually the first point of contact for anyone approaching the practice.
Blakes Chartered Surveyors
15 Approach Road, London SW20 8BA
020 7373 7373
Monday to Friday, 9.00am to 5.30pm
We are a two-minute walk from Raynes Park station, with bus links and pay-and-display parking nearby. We act for clients throughout London and the South East, and regularly for clients living overseas. First meetings are usually by telephone, email or in person; video is available on request.
Contact us today and ask one our friendly consultants who will provide a free initial consultation to discuss how we may be able to assist you.
Send us the address, the unexpired lease term and the ground rent, and we’ll come back with an initial view at no cost. If it isn’t the right time to act, we’ll tell you that too.
