My mother has a LEASEHOLD HOUSE and I've only just found out, as has she!!

macman

Emmia said:

macman said:

I'm also going to go against the flow here. With 793 years left on the lease, and assuming a peppercorn ground rent, I cannot see that ownership of the freehold is going to increase the value of the property by even £650. It's also not going to make the property less desirable, as the odds are that all the neighbouring houses are also freehold, with a similar lease remaining. 
The only people who would be put off are those with an unfounded suspicion of leasehold property, who seem to be numerous.  It doesn't seem to deter anyone from buying a flat, or a house in most of inner London.

With flats in London leasehold is a fact of life as a flat only occupies part of a building, and very few are share of freehold.

I wouldn't buy a leasehold house though whether in London or outside - even if the ground rent is very small and the lease is very long as I'd want to own the whole building and the land under it.

I was mainly referring to the large number of leasehold houses in central London on the 4 main estates. There are properties in Mayfair, on the Grosvenor Estate, valued at £250m plus, but they are still leasehold, and that doesn't seem to deter the buyers, even with a relatively short lease of around 100 years.

Hannimal

Even the legal fees are higher if you're buying a leasehold. I was entirely put off buying leasehold houses because they were listed the same price as freeholds in my area (but are on the market much, much longer), and because I don't fully understand the leasehold system and I just know it would account for extra legal fees and some surprises could pop up later on in the process. A friend was buying a leasehold house and it was only after she had put aside legal fees she learnt she couldn't have her dog in the house so she pulled out. Call me paranoid or what you like but I avoided leaseholds. Had I seen one listed that said the freehold could be bought for £650 I would've seen it. It sounds like a bargain should she ever want to sell the house.

AdrianC

SouthLondonUser said:
Many people from other countries find it totally bonkers that so many British buyers like wooden doors and single-glazed wooden windows, which are so thermally inefficient that they are illegal abroad

I'm going to guess that your experience of "abroad" is fairly limited...

BTW, there are minimum energy efficiency standards for all new doors and windows in the UK, and have been for decades. 

csgohan4

Make sure it isn't a scam and the company in question matches the one on the lease. 

SouthLondonUser

AdrianC said:

I'm going to guess that your experience of "abroad" is fairly limited...

BTW, there are minimum energy efficiency standards for all new doors and windows in the UK, and have been for decades. 

It is not, but that's not the point. The point is that the reasons why people like or dislike a property are very subjective, not always fully rational, and change hugely from place to place, so it is more productive to try to understand what the local preferences are, than to scratch one's head saying those preferences don't make sense.

BTW, the minimum standards relate only to new installations, so it is perfectly possible to still find doors and windows which do not comply with those new regulations, not to mention that it is still possible to fit thermally inefficient wooden doors and single-glazed windows. When I explained to some German friends that there can be restrictions (e.g. because you are in a conservation area, or because of your lease) preventing you from installing double-glazed windows, they didn't want to believe me.