lease "900 years unexpired"?

smpNWI

Hi,
A property I'm interested in is a leasehold: house, part of a row of listed houses with a shared garden. 
When I asked about the leasehold, I was told "the lease is 900 years unexpired". I asked when from, and the agent tells me it never expires, and that's what "unexpired" means. 

Is this true? If so, what makes it a leasehold? Just the ground rent/service charge? Considering it's listed, I wouldn't have been able to intervene much on the outside anyway so I'm not sure what the difference to a listed freehold would be, beside the charges?

Any thoughts? Thanks!

user1977

smpNWI said:

When I asked about the leasehold, I was told "the lease is 900 years unexpired". I asked when from, and the agent tells me it never expires, and that's what "unexpired" means. 

Is this true?

No, it means it will expire about 900 years in the future. It will be a certain date, otherwise it isn't a lease. But for all practical purposes, it's pretty much indefinite.

xylophone

I'd have thought it meant that the lease expired in 900 years time - may have started out as a 999 year lease - my first property was a flat with a 999 year lease first granted in the early seventies.
I thought I'd expire long before it did.......

smpNWI

That's what I though too!
It's quite annoying that he lied then.

I was wondering how this would affect its price vs a more standard 125-year lease. – or rather its future price.

NameUnavailable

Leasehold means that you are buying the lease, not the property. The lease is a bundle of A4 paper that gives you the right to live in the property for 900 years (in this case) subject to various terms and conditions contained within. It is essentially a long term rental agreement that you can sell on in the future. In 900 years time when the lease runs out you would need to vacate but I expect you will vacate long before then in any case!

The longer the lease the better, so it will have positive impact on price or rather saleability as it seems most agents ignore lease length when giving a valuation!

GDB2222

Some tourists in the Museum of Natural History are marveling at some dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard, "Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?"

The guard replies, "They are 65,000,011 years old."

"That's an awfully exact number," says the tourist. "How do you know their age so precisely?"

The guard answers, "Well, the dinosaur bones were sixty five million years old when I started working here, and that was eleven years ago."

tizerbelle

Read the lease.  My 999 year lease (well it was 999 years in 1898 when it was issued) means all I have to pay is £1.14 ground rent per year, it doesnt increase ever!  There are no restrictions on what I can do with the house, I don't need to ask or pay for permission to change something.  I don't have to pay to maintain a patch of grass in the middle of the estate.  The increasing ground rent / introduction of service charges / having to pay for permission to do somethig are all modern constructs by big business to access easy money.

I'm in the north west and there are thousands and thousands of old style leasehold houses here, so many that there is no difference in sale prices between leasehold and freehold properties.

GDB2222

I live in a Garden Suburb that was built around 100 years ago, and all the houses were on 999 year leases. That meant that the Suburb Trust could exercise very strict control over any building work, and any extensions or repairs had to be done according to a very strict code. When leasehold enfranchisement came in, the Suburb Trust got an act of parliament to continue the control scheme.

It has worked. The area is a pleasant, harmonious environment to live and walk around in, despite being quite close to the centre of London. 

anselld

smpNWI said:

That's what I though too!
It's quite annoying that he lied then.

EAs tend to make up something plausible rather than admit they don't know the answer.  I don't think they consider it lying.