leasehold house - ground rent issue

pavlovs_dog

we bought our house in September 2010. We were told at the time that the leaseholder was unknown. The previous owner, who had the house for about 14 months, claims never to have been contacted during that time regarding ground rent. As a precaution, we paid for an indemnity policy to cover us, ensuring that we could not be chased for ground rent pre-dating our purchase of the property.

Today we have had a letter from Urbanpoint Property Management Limited, who are acting on behalf of G & O Properties (London) LTD. They are requesting we pay £1.37 ground rent for the period 2/11/2010 - 1/05/2011. Including in the letter is "invoice/statement" , also on Urbanpoint headed paper showing a debit balance brought forward of 4.11, however no date is given to say when this has been brought forward from (it obviously predates the 2nd Nov - 1st May entry, as this is entered separately on the invoice). This invoice says we actually owe £5.48

The amount they are asking for is small change, so that isn't my concern. What I want to know is how I can verify that they do genuinely own the freehold to my property. Is this possible?

Richard_Webster

1. You are the leaseholder because you hold the lease. Urbanpoint are telling you that G & O Properties (London) Ltd is the freeholder.

2. As far as checking who the freeholder is you can either write back to Urbanpoint saying that your predecessors had not had a demand for ground rent for years so you want Urbanpoint to prove that the company in question is the freeholder or you can check it yourself at the Land Registry. It costs £4 to get a copy of the freehold title from the landregistry.gov.uk site (not any of those other sites that appear at the top having paid for their Google entries - they just charge extra for the same thing).

Do a property enquiry and put in your postcode and address and it should show a title number for a leasehold and one for a freehold. You get a copy of the freehold title and it should show G & O as registered proprietor - if it doesn't then you refuse to pay the ground rent until Urbanpoint prove they are entitled to collect it.

G_M

We were told at the time that the leaseholder was unknown.

As Richard points out above, you (and before you, the people from whom you bought) are the leaseholders. Presumably you mean the freeholder was unknown.

As Richard also points out, you can download the freehold Title from the Land Registry here for £4.00.

This begs the question: who told you the 'freeholder' was unknown?

If you used a solicitor they would have checked with the LR and found the answer. Were they incompetent?
If the seller told you this, did you not check or get your solicitor to check?
If you did not use a solicitor, well, you clearly should have done!

The only alternative is that the land is unregistered, in which case neither your solicitor at the time, nor you now, will find the answer at the Land Registry.

In that case, you will need the property company to produce sufficient Conveyancing documents going back over time to prove they own the freehold (this is how conveyancing was done before the Land Registry was set up).

Once you've established they really are the freeholders, I would not bother to dispute the extra charge for the period before you bought. It's so small it just isn't worth the agro. Just pay it and enjoy living stress-free in your new home.

Richard_Webster

It is possible, but in my view, unlikely that anyone was to blame for not finding the freeholder when OP bought.

A lot of unknown freeholds belong to the descendants of those who granted the leases in the first place. They became old and it was not worth while collecting the small amounts of rent - they would have had unregistered titles so were usually not traceable. Old person dies and family find documents about the freeholds and wonder whether they are worth anything and look around for a buyer.

A property company buys them cheaply hoping to cash in on selling the freeholds at a profit to the individual house owners and in the meantime to make the odd amount on the side by charging for retrospective consent for extensions etc that perhaps are required consent under the lease. Only on change of ownership would the title become registrable so it is most like that this property company has recently acquired the freeholds and has decided to collect the rents etc.