Freehold/Leasehold confused

vcb1981

Hi, I am looking to check the status of our house, owned for 3 years but actually dont know. I emailed land registry and this is their response. Can someone explain what this, or more important does this leave us open in any bad way?

So you have a single freehold title and a head leasehold title covering a number of properties, including No 3. Number 3 is then registered as a single leasehold in your name.

I used to own a leasehold flat and it was a pain increasing the leasehold and very expensive so want to check what the situation is in my house.

TIA!:A

Retired_Mortgage_Adviser

As long as your house isn't a new/recent build, don't panic yet. There are plenty of regions in the country with leasehold houses which are in effect as close to freehold as you can get - leases that have hundreds of years remaining on them, no service chanes and peppercorn ground rent that no one collects.

As part of the conveyancing, your solicitor should have sent you a copy of the lease. Go through your emails and try to find it. That will tell you how long the lease is and how many years are left on it? Do you pay any service charge? In the 3 years that you have been there, have you had any demands for ground rent?

vcb1981

Thank you. Its around 16 years old now but have never had any requests in the 3 years for any type of rent nor do we pay any services charges. I feel very confused

eddddy

vcb1981 wrote: »

So you have a single freehold title and a head leasehold title covering a number of properties, including No 3. Number 3 is then registered as a single leasehold in your name.

So there are 3 levels of ownership relevant to your property:

1. A freehold
2. A head lease
3. A lease (also called a sublease)

So that might mean, for example:

• A freeholder (Mr A) owns a big bit of land - maybe with 100 houses on it

• Mr A has granted a head lease on part of the land to Mr B - maybe the land on Mr B's head lease has 10 houses on it

• Mr B has granted you a lease (sublease) for one of the 10 houses/land that his head lease covers

If you download the title plans for each of the 3 titles (for £3 each), you should be able to see how the land is split up between the 3 levels.

See: https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAProperty/view/QuickEnquiryInit.do


Your lease is a contractual agreement between you and the head leaseholder. It should state what the ground rent is and what the service charge is based on. You have to pay ground frent and service charges to the head leaseholder.


(Your head leaseholder will have a contractual agreement with the freeholder. Perhaps the head leaseholder has to pay ground rent and service charges to the freeholder. But that's not really any of your business.)