Victorian house in Sheffield is freehold but subject to a lease

anathematician

greatcrested said:

anathematician said:

Thanks all. The EA is saying that 'the lease is now void as the house is freehold and the freehold over rides the lease and the freehold is owned by the seller.' I'd love that to be true, but from what you're all saying it's not that simple.

I suppose it comes down to a calculated risk on my part. It's annoying, because I've already tried buying a leasehold flat on two separate occasions, both of which fell through. I assumed buying a freehold house would be straightforward. If anything this is the most complicated of all of them.

Maybe things work differently up north, but that sounds like either an ignorant EA, or a deliberately misleading one who just wants to allay your fears so the sale moves forward.

Every leasehold has an asociated freehold!

The freeholder owns the land, and the strucural bricks and mortar of the building.

The leaseholder owns the right to live inside the building (or in the case of a block of flats, in one of the flats within the building, for a period of time.

The freehold does not 'over ride' the lease.Indeed arguably the other way round. The lease over rides the freeholder's right to occupy the building (or part of the building).

I agre with David and others above in that if a leasholder did appear, the chances are they'd want paying off rather than sudenly wanting occupation. My example was worst case.....

Thanks for this! I suppose the likelihood of the leaseholder showing up is fairly low...after all, the vendor has lived in the property since the mid-1980s with no problems. And as you say, the indemnity insurance will cover me financially.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that removing the lease would be the most sensible option. I'm not sure why the vendor's solicitors are so reluctant to do so. I'm guessing it's quite an onerous process, especially given that the lease itself seems to have disappeared.

AdrianC

anathematician said:

Thanks all. The EA is saying that 'the lease is now void as the house is freehold and the freehold over rides the lease and the freehold is owned by the seller.' I'd love that to be true, but from what you're all saying it's not that simple.

EVERY house that's leasehold is also freehold. Every flat that's leasehold comes under a freehold.

All those new-build houses on estates where there's lots of "fleecehold" muttering about onerous lease terms and high, rapidly-escalating ground-rent? Somebody owns the freehold. Often, the freeholds have been sold by the developer to other companies. The lease still exists...

All those houses in ancient estates in London, where the freehold is owned by the Duke of Whereverminster or the Crown Estate? The lease still exists...

theoretica

The way I am reading this in 1890 or whenever the Victorian freeholder set up a long lease on the land (probably to avoid the stamp duty of the day - I am not sure of the dates but there was a time when stamp duty was only payable on sales and not really long leases).  Then the houses built on the land were separately sold as leaseholds. (Is this when they were built?  A landholder long lease to the developer was quite common).  In 1986 some previous owner decided to rationalise this and bought out the freehold of their house - separate from all the other in the row. 

The vendor's solicitor is pointing out that completely wiping all mention of the original lease may not be sensible, because it is in there that random things may be found - like the entitlement of residents in those houses to keep sheep in the field opposite, or use other communal ground/access routes/utilities. Because the original lease seems to be AWOL neither they nor you know whether it has important and still relevant things that weren't copied into the freehold, or not.