Ground rent. £450 a MONTH? what do you pay?

bunking_off

Leasehold on houses is pretty common. On the newbuild estate where I live, the default was leasehold unless you paid extra to get the freehold (which we did). Can't remember what our ground rent would have been, but £450/yr does seem a lot...I only used to pay that much on my old flat and that covered both ground rent and service charge.

It's an unusual mortgage company that would refuse to lend on a leasehold property. They commonly get cold feet when the leasehold is coming to the end of its term (e.g. <40-50 yrs), but normally whether the property's freehold or leasehold isn't material.

pault123

They made an error on the valuation. The fullstop was missed out!

£4.50 it should read!

Thanks for all the replies.

I have also heard as part of the lease it sometimes speculates which buildings and contents insurer you have to use, has anyone came accross this?

Paul

Spendless

pault123 wrote:

They made an error on the valuation. The fullstop was missed out!

£4.50 it should read!

Thanks for all the replies.

I have also heard as part of the lease it sometimes speculates which buildings and contents insurer you have to use, has anyone came accross this?

Paul

Really pleased to hear that. Not sure about your last question, but someone else'll probably know.

Good Luck in your new home

xx

divadee

pault123 wrote:

They made an error on the valuation. The fullstop was missed out!

£4.50 it should read!

Thanks for all the replies.

I have also heard as part of the lease it sometimes speculates which buildings and contents insurer you have to use, has anyone came accross this?

Paul

glad about the error i thought £450 was a bit steep . and i assume thats a year is it? not a month?

bunking_off

PaulT123,

I'm not sure about the position with leasehold houses, but certainly when I was in a flat and the ownership of the freehold changed hands, our new freeholder was able to dictate which buildings insurer our management company used...which happened to be the freeholder's own, of course.

I'd imagine that similar considerations could apply to a house.

mando_2

pault123 wrote:

I have also heard as part of the lease it sometimes speculates which buildings and contents insurer you have to use, has anyone came accross this?

Paul

Glad its not that high. A friend bought a house with a leasehold and was told that she needed a certain amount insured for liability or something like that, because it was a very high amount, she ended up having her insurance through the lease company. So yes, they can dictate somethings to you.

pault123

4.50 per year which is good!

Ive been using moneysupermarket and reading some of martins reccomendations on home insurance; won't be happy if it turns out ill pay twice as much having to stick with the leaseholders choice of insurance company. I like to be able to make my own choice in moneysaving matters lol.

Propably their' way of making some more money back on the lease?

Paul

QuidProQuo

mando wrote:

So yes, they can dictate somethings to you.

I read on Ceefax financial pages only this week that the law has or is about to be changed and the land owner can no longer dictate the insurer.

I happen to know that Jones homes built quite a large estate of houses around 10 years ago, all leasehold.

For a two bed property they charged £60 per year and offer a £10 discount if you pay with 14 days of receiving the bill. For a four bed property they charge £100 reducing to £90.

They also have wrote into the deeds that after a period of approximately 15 years the ground rent will rise by something like 25%.

If anyone wanted to buy the lease they requested 15x the annual ground rent plus an administration fee of £150+VAT, plus your own solicitors fees.

£4.50 per year is a good deal.

QuidProQuo

Found news item on bbc website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4304781.stm

pault123

Thanks R.Sole for the link, that is good news!

According to the link it is in affect now. Surprised ive not read it anywhere else as it will enable a lot of leaseholders tied to a certain insurer to save money.

Paul