Freehold -v- Leasehold

[markwilliams82]

Have been looking at a property thats currently on the market that we were interested in buying and put an initial offer in on.

After doing more research now turns out that there is no real clarification on the tenure status and the houses on the estate are all mixed with a 70/30 split in favour of leasehold.

This has now put some question marks on this for us so we've lost interest because we've always been told to look for freehold

What are peoples opinions on this?

 

[Dalandius]

With leasehold you do not own the ground the property sits on or even the property itself.

From https://www.gov.uk/leasehold-property

You only own a leasehold property for a fixed period of time.

You’ll have a legal agreement with the landlord (sometimes known as the ‘freeholder’) called a ‘lease’. This tells you how many years you’ll own the property.

Ownership of the property returns to the landlord when the lease comes to an end.

Most flats are leasehold. Houses can be leasehold too and usually are if they’re bought through a shared ownership scheme.

You could buy the freehold of the property off the landlord (https://www.lease-advice.org/faq/i-own-a-leasehold-house-how-do-i-buy-the-freehold/)

I would only consider buying if I could buy the freehold for the right price. The price the leasehold property plus the freehold would havew to be no more than if the property was a freehold.

 

[Skillmister]

With leasehold you do not own the ground the property sits on or even the property itself.

This is a complete over exaggeration. I'm the first to shout up about the problems with leasehold but this is not the correct way to describe it nor is it actually a problem.

You do own the property (obviously), you simply don't own it indefinitely. Now clearly that's a potential issue if you are buying a property that's halfway through a 99 year lease but most new leasehold properties are 999 year leases so it's not going to be a problem for you, kids, any future buyer for 10s of generations etc...

 

[markwilliams82]

It’s a strange situation as the land registry shows both free and lease holds

The vendors own the property unlike the neighbours which is fully leasehold and the deeds show a property company owning it.

This shows the vendors owning the property but later on it shows a lease exploring in 2082 which is split between the council, developers and individual

 

[Bluecube]

I’m speaking from almost complete ignorance here as Scotland doesn’t have this issue, but can the leasehold owners not bump up certain fees by significant amounts? I read there’s been some scandal where newbuild homes have had their leaseholds sold on by the builders to investment companies who then proceeded to scalp the home owners at every opportunity.

 

[Skillmister]

It’s a strange situation as the land registry shows both free and lease holds

The vendors own the property unlike the neighbours which is fully leasehold and the deeds show a property company owning it.

This shows the vendors owning the property but later on it shows a lease exploring in 2082 which is split between the council, developers and individual

There are so many different scenarios it could be anything. It's completely normal to have freeholds and leaseholds next to each other. Some will have bought freehold off the bat, some bought leasehold then freehold later on and some just leasehold. Often it's a case of buyers who know what they are doing insisting on buying the freehold.

Oh and to complicate matters sometimes when you buy the freehold the leasehold doesn't merge/close so you own both

 

[markwilliams82]

Oh joy

Shame as we accepted offer to our house today and this is the nicest house we’ve seen the in area suited for our little ones school future

Have sent the details to the solicitor to try and firm up what it is but vendors are saying it’s freehold

Fingers crossed they bought the freehold and it’s just not been closed off fully