Buying a leasehold house - freeholder unknown

This is quite a common situation with long leasehold houses with very low ground rents.

If the ground rent is 2/- then is it surprising that the freeholder has disappeared. I don't know about the South Wales Valleys but in my area where the ground rents are £2-£3 per year it is very common for the freeholder not to be capable of being contacted.

Typical situation is that Some landowner owned freehold when leases were granted maybe 100 yaers ago. He died perhaps 70 years ago and left ground rents to his children and when they died perhaps 40 yaers ago their children wondered what all the odd references to these properties and small amounts of rent were in amongst the deceased's papers - so they got ignored and nobody bothered to even try to collect the money. People moved away and now can't be traced. Land Registry won't have records of freehold title because last change of ownership would have been before registration compulsory.

Leases granted 100 ish years ago rarely had any provision for increase of ground rents but your solicitor will check that point and confirm it to you.

As far as buying the freehold is concerned once you have owned the house for 2 yaers you can start the statutory procedure to acquire it. The actual price will be minimal - less than £50 I'd guess - but the legal costs will be considerable - because even to start the procedure you have to serve a notice on the freeholder, which is difficult to do if you do not know who he is and where he is - so you have to apply to court for leave either for a notice in a newspaper to be treated as good service or to dispense with service the notice altogether. Then you have to pay a surveyor a few hundred pounds to give evidence to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal that the freehold is worth very little and eventually after a lot of legal procedures you will get an order for the freehold to be vested in you. For most people it simply won't be worth the time and cost (£2,000?).