Leasehold houses excessive charges - fight hots up

littlerock

Piece in the paper at the weekend about how a group of homeowners who bought new houses on leases a few years back, only to find, when they tried to buy the freeholds that these had already been sold on by the developer to property investment companies. Two of the biggest owners of these freeholds are Vincent Tchenghiz's Consensus Business Group and William Astor's (David Cameron brother in law) Long Harbour Fund which controls Adriatic Land which owns a large number of freeholds.

In the article Peter Collier, a computer games designer. describes how he paid £327,000 for his house in 2013, only to have the freehold sold without warning to Adriatic Land. In another case, Katie Kendrick a paediatric nurse, who runs the National Leasehold Campaign, paid Bellway £214, 995 for their house in 2014. Bellway then sold the freehold to Adriatic Land which quoted her £13,350 to buy the freehold informally in 2017, more than three times the figure quoted to them by Bellway when they bought the house.

Long Harbour's position is that if the buyers were misled about their ability and cost to purchase the freehold at the time they bought the house, this should be taken up with the developer who sold them the house. A Bellway spokesman said "for many years prior to January 2018 when Bellway pledged to discontinue the sale of leasehold houses, it was commonplace for local authorities, certain land owners and the majority of housebuilders to sell homes and development sites on a long lease basis. " I see they do not comment on the ethics of selling on the freeholds to financial investment companies and pricing the home owners out of the ability to buy the freehold themselves. According to the DT the practice of selling houses on long leases instead of freehold, started in around 2008.

Louie Burns, MD of Leasehold Solutions, acting for the National Leasehold Campaign, plans to serve group notices for 400 leasehold owners, to exercise the right to buy their freeholds from 5 investment firms, over the next few weeks. The reason the freeholds are valuable to property investment firms is of course because many of these leasehold homes have onerous charges on the ground rents payable which in worst cases can double every 10 years.and these charges represent an income stream to the freeholder who can also charge the home owner for permission to do things like buiding a conservatory or adding an extension.

The law was changed on 2018 but not retrospectively. Thousands of owners of leasehold homes remain trapped, in many cases unable to sell them as a result of the excessive ground rent increases and freehold costs.

anselld

How is that "hotting up" exactly? The 400 are simply being helped to exercise their existing statutory right to purchase the freehold. They will have to pay fair compensation to the investment companies in return.

RelievedSheff

Leasehold properties are hardly a new thing. The majority of homes in Sheffield for example are leasehold. It doesn't affect their sale at all.

Nlc

There has been no law changed in 2018.

Nlc

There is a big difference between old fashioned leases with a peppercorn ground rent and the new exploitative leaseholds that are unnecessarily being created.
Leasehold is a feudal outdated abusive system that has been abolished in most other countries around the world. Even Scotland managed it.