Leasehold reform proposals could save homeowners £1,000s - MSE News

dnees

Hi. Yes you would need a management company in a block of flats. When commonhold replaces leasehold as we hope,then the people will OWN their flat and a part of the ground the block sits on. There will be managers who are also owners of their flat in the block. The owners will choose the management company and decide how their money is spent. A lot of work has been done by the law commission to take the best way forward for commonhold. The only builder/ developer I know of that build commonhold now and have been, are Hopton Build. Find them on Twitter and Face book. Commonhold has not taken off in a big way because leasehold tenure is to good a source of income for landlord freeholders and most developers.

pepita

Does anyone have any leasehold of 999 years? It includes an annual £1ground rent - that will be review every 10 years (double up I would assume after all cases seen in the news). The concerning fact is that there is a maintenance charge or £550/year that it will be reviewed yearly.
Not 100% sure how this will work out knowing that the ground rent isn't going to make the landlords any moneys. I'm just thinking the yearly maintenance charge is where they will be getting their stake every year as they can increase as they wish (following index prices, etc.... in the development seller point of view!). As per my understanding there isn't any clause/law that manages the increases in service/maintenance charges, at least the site management can't provide the info for it.
Did anyone stumbled in a similar situation?

Joanne_Borchert

Why is England still peddling Leasehold when Scotland and other European countries use the Commonhold model? Urgent reform, these properties are the new PPI, dwindling leases, devalued values, unprotected service and management charges, making an rapidly growing number unsellable. Why? Companies like Adriatic Land own so many Freeholds as part of Blue Harbour Pension funds. The leaseholder finances these funds through Ground Rent charges, could be a 10/15 year doubler, or RPI. In the 80's most were peppercorn! Their are no safeguards in place to stop Management/Service charge companies from fleecing Leaseholders, many legal contests are biased and pitted against the rich Freeholder. Leasehold is a license for the Freeholder to hold the Leaseholder to ransom or worst lose their financial investment.

BurntOutLeaseholder

Please write to your MP and ask them to support the abolition of Leasehold.
Tell all your friends and relatives not to buy Leasehold property.
Report all adverts for Leasehold ‘homes’ to the Advertising standards authorities it takes one minute via their website.
[nationalleaseholdcampaign online

D.leck

Martin, please please help with this matter if you possibly can. This is a huge concern and ridiculously unfair. We feel trapped. Buying a new build house on an extortionate leasehold rate we were told we could by the freehold within 4 weeks of the purchase so the leasehold we thought, was temporary.After purchasing, whilst going through the process the solicitor advised us all covenants would still stand and we were paying 20 years ground rent in advance for the privilege - both of which they deemed unfair and was really buying us nothing. Based on this we didn’t buy.
We weren’t shown any of these terms when purchasing and the sales advisor made out it was a simple process. Not one word was mentioned about it being a con of a freehold.
Now we are trapped. It’s unlikely we would be able to sell the property leasehold and we have to pay huge annual rent which we have little control over as years go on. To buy the freehold gives us no rights to even put a window box up without permission and a fee.
Ridiculous and devastating. Our life savings are in this property. All we want is a freehold at a reasonable price with the option to have the rights to have our home as we wish. Exactly what we thought would happen when we were totally mis sold this house.

HRH_MUngo

I have a modern flat which I rent out. Some of the other flat holders had difficulty selling because of rapidly increasing ground rents. I rang the developers (Persimmon) as I had heard that they would allow a deed of variation to the ground rent increasing by RPI, that lenders would accept. I have instructed a solicitor on this and it will cost me £750. Hope this helps someone.

But bring on the commonhold, can't come quikly enough!

Martaldn

GDB2222 wrote: »

I appreciate that people buy a lease and would like to extend that at nil cost, but it means the freeholder suffers a commensurate loss. There's no money tree to shake, which makes the money appear.

The argument that freeholders are rich people, so ought to be fleeced in this way is a bit odd. Car makers are rich companies, so should they be made to give their cars away? Apple is an incredibly rich company, so should we all get free iphones? Maybe, we should change the political system, but for the time being we seem to be in a capitalist country.

Where people claim not to have understood that they were buying a lease, I am simply flabbergasted. The biggest transaction of their lives, and they claim they did not understand what they were doing? To be frank, I don't believe them. But, if it were true, it's not painting a very flattering picture of themselves, is it?

When you buy an iPhone you know exactly what you are paying for. If the phone is faulty or if you think as consumer your rights haven’t been guaranteed you have the right to complaint and you have the law that protect you. If you buy a leaseholde no on protect you from unregulated mgmt companies that can charge you thousands pounds to carry out works that can be done at a fraction of the cost. Or you have to pay building insurance with hidden commissions on in without knowing any of this beforehand.


Do you think we are all a bunch of idiots?!
Where is the human rights protection for us?
I don’t want my flat for free I have a 22 years mortgage to pay so the last thing you can accuse us is of wanting freebies.

Socajam

pepita wrote: »

Does anyone have any leasehold of 999 years? It includes an annual £1ground rent - that will be review every 10 years (double up I would assume after all cases seen in the news). The concerning fact is that there is a maintenance charge or £550/year that it will be reviewed yearly.
Not 100% sure how this will work out knowing that the ground rent isn't going to make the landlords any moneys. I'm just thinking the yearly maintenance charge is where they will be getting their stake every year as they can increase as they wish (following index prices, etc.... in the development seller point of view!). As per my understanding there isn't any clause/law that manages the increases in service/maintenance charges, at least the site management can't provide the info for it.
Did anyone stumbled in a similar situation?

When I bought my flat which was a 4 bed roomed semi detached house in London (3 bedrooms are extremely large), separate bathroom and toilet.
The lease was 999 years, with a £1 per year ground rent. - extremely large back garden.
The person who owns the ground floor owns the freehold, but at the number of years, I will have no problem selling.
I was very lucky to stumble upon it in 1989@£39,000.00

GDB2222

Martaldn wrote: »

When you buy an iPhone you know exactly what you are paying for. If the phone is faulty or if you think as consumer your rights haven’t been guaranteed you have the right to complaint and you have the law that protect you. If you buy a leaseholde no on protect you from unregulated mgmt companies that can charge you thousands pounds to carry out works that can be done at a fraction of the cost. Or you have to pay building insurance with hidden commissions on in without knowing any of this beforehand.


Do you think we are all a bunch of idiots?!
Where is the human rights protection for us?
I don’t want my flat for free I have a 22 years mortgage to pay so the last thing you can accuse us is of wanting freebies.

You are confusing two issues. Management costs, where the leaseholders have huge protection, including the right to take over the management themselves. And, the cost of extending leases, which this Law Commission report is about. They have made suggestions for improvements to the system. All the sock puppets that have suddenly appeared think the freeholders should simply have their rights confiscated.

I only say this in case there are some genuine readers here who have been confused.

simondv

"You are confusing two issues. Management costs, where the leaseholders have huge protection, including the right to take over the management themselves. And, the cost of extending leases, which this Law Commission report is about. They have made suggestions for improvements to the system. All the sock puppets that have suddenly appeared think the freeholders should simply have their rights confiscated.

I only say this in case there are some genuine readers here who have been confused."

Much of this is nonsense - Leaseholders cannot always change the freeholder appointed managing agent, for example where more than 20% commercial in the building, housing association shared ownership leasehold, and houses with park home type leases.
The human rights of 6 million leaseholders must take precedence over the rights of a remote freeholder who may have only paid 1 or 2% for the freehold interest and yet expects disproportionate, excessive compensation. Most freeholders are only concerned about an income stream from the building, the leaseholders get nothing for the ground rents and excessive permission fees charged.
I hope genuine readers as you put it are not conned into buying into the leasehold system, and know what they are getting into. They are just buying a long tenancy, paying a lot of money upfront and may have to pay a lot more to escape from it. Time for England and Wales to join the rest of the civilised world in using Commonhold instead of the archaic, abusive tenure of long leasehold.