Urgent Help Needed - Difficult Dilemma

David_Evans

Bossypants wrote: »

The point of a 999 year lease is that it's so far in the future that none of that actually matters in practice, because none of us will be alive or have recognisable heirs anywhere near that long anyway (999 years ago was 46 year before William the Conqueror, well, conquered, and nearly 200 year before Magna Carta). It's a way of circumventing the restrictions and inconveniences of leasehold which don't make sense in the modern world, without actually getting rid of the practice altogether.

Most of the British upper classes (starting with the Royals) own their land today due to their ancestors. The land has always been there. Ownership must have started with the kings and was then given away for war service, mustering of regiments etc.

I thought long leases like this were a way of calculating future ground rent (eg ''peppercorn'' rents). Main point being the freeholder still had some rights to minerals etc beneath the ground.

(Although I understand in the UK, the govt / crown keeps most of those rights - compared to the USA etc. - Hence we would never see the equivalent of the ''Texas oil billionaires'' in the UK - as the govt would own the oil under any land).

Owain_Moneysaver

David_Evans wrote: »

You can't a patch of space in the air, can you?

Yes.

I don't have to own the ground the building is on. I have the right of support from the flats below, so if they want to build a supermarket there they can, as long as my flat stays in place on steel legs with an access stair :rotfl:

Tenement law has been updated in the last few decades but basically the ground floor owned the solum and the top floor owned the roof, with each flat having a right and an obligation to support the flats above/below.

We also manage without a Party Wall Act in Scotland. Basically you must not do anything to your mutual wall or floor/ceiling that harms your neighbour.

davidmcn

David_Evans wrote: »

How can a flat be freehold?

Because there's no particular reason why a flat shouldn't be freehold. The difficulty in England is that their land law has difficulty coping with freehold interests stacked on top of each other, so they made flats leasehold as a bit of a fudge, not because anybody thought leasing flats was a particularly great idea.

Which one of these ''freeholders'' owns the ground the building is on? If the building is burnt down or destroyed, who owns the patch of land?

Typically the ground is owned jointly by all the flats, so everyone would have an equal interest if the building disappeared.

You can't own a patch of space in the air, can you?

Yes you can.

Rosieandjim

I would not touch Flat 1 due to this


https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/31/owners-ex-local-authority-homes-bills-thousands


Flat 2 would be a much better option