Leasehold Woes

Yeah I made a thread about leasehold properties several years ago.

It does seem bizarre how you can spend £500,000 to buy a house but in reality you're just renting it for your lifetime.

It's just a way for the elite to maintain their control and take back what is always theirs. We're all slaves at the end of the day.
 
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Two sides to it IMO - assuming things like ground rent don't get out of control then it is a more secure way of "renting" but at the same time it needs to be balanced so that people do have the option of buying their own property outright otherwise it just plays into the hands of the unscrupulous and means those who were fortunate to come along first hold all the cards.
 
In this situation it's not really two sides. The builders decided they could make a couple of thousand per house more by selling the freehold separately from the leasehold. It's pure greed TBH.

That said a decent solicitor should have noticed that.
 
Personally i think its utterly disgusting and yet another reason why the entire property market in the UK is broken. As some one above said its loophole being exploited by the greed of builders/bankers/landowners.

You buy a house you should be being the land it stands on as well.

Flats etc I can understand to a degree as its a communal thing but independent houses no way.
 
Short Leaseholds can be a nightmare.

When I bought my 1st house, it only had 80 years leasehold left, It wasn't mentioned by the conveyancing solicitor and I thought nothing of it. Roll on 10 years later when I came to sell it and it had 70 years left, it became a huge nightmare to sell the property. Added to the fact the Freeholder to my land was "absent/could not be easily traced" it took more than 2 years and about £8000 to sort, not to mention the huge amount of stress suffered ,knowing that you can't sell a house.

I was in my early 20's when i bought that house ,and i didn't know anything about leaseholds (infact it's the norm in this part of the country), but i sure do now.

Suffice to say I made sure the next house and subsequent ones are all freehold.
 
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That estate is a bit over a mile from where I live. Until I saw that story I thought leasehold was just a London / big city thing. I had never even heard of it round here. I suspect she was badly advised or didn't really understand the implications.

Value of those houses is going to be depressed as a result. If you look around the area (CH66 post code) everything is freehold. There's another 2000 houses going up in the borough, so not exactly a shortage either.
 
My brother had to pay over 20k last year to extend his lease so he can sell his flat. Wiped out any "profit" from property value going up.

My flat is leasehold too but with 992 years left so I should be fine for a while. :)
 
I'd never buy a leasehold property, no matter how long it has, I've just bought a new build and wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't freehold.
 
Leasehold = bad news in most cases. The UK property market is in real mess, never mind adding in potential leasehold problems. Buying leasehold is taking on the same level of risk as buying a property abroad with no knowledge of the area, culture, laws and language. Personally, I don't know why anyone in their right mind would pay a hyperinflated price for a house on land they won't own. Can only think it's due to a lack of knowledge and/or complacency.
 
Amp34 said:
In this situation it's not really two sides. The builders decided they could make a couple of thousand per house more by selling the freehold separately from the leasehold. It's pure greed TBH.

That said a decent solicitor should have noticed that.
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Ah didn't click link - assumed it was this one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38834621

Personally I think leaseholds are evil and wrong but I can see a niche where they are useful to some people.
 
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We were in a bit of a tricky situation. Our old house in Newton Heath/Manchester was a rough area, which we weren't aware of until it was too late and we'd moved in. 4 burglaries in the street and my car being broken into we'd had enough so put it up for sale. Bought the house for £115k and put it up for £125k, we weren't expecting much as our neighbour lost £15k selling theirs. First person to view thew house liked it and offered £120k for it, we snapped his hand off. Proviso was he wanted a very quick completion, so we (me, wife, daughter, dog and cat) had to move out of the house and into my parents without a deal done on another house.

Long story but we can only buy new builds due to the special rates my wife gets working for Halifax. In the area we wanted to live there were three developments. First one we can't afford any of the houses, second one they were super rude to us, and the third were leasehold properties. We couldn't hang around and needed somewhere to live, so we went with one of the leasehold houses. It's not what we'd chose in an ideal situation, but we had limited options.

We pay something like £250 a year rent on the lease, and about £60 a year as a service charge for upkeep of communal areas. It's a 140 year lease with 136 years left, so not something that's going to become a problem until after I'd dead lol. That being said, we do want to buy the freehold on the property at some point, when we are financially more stable.

TL;DR - We had no choice but to buy a leasehold property, I hope we don't get screwed over.
 
I would never buy leasehold. Dealt with enough problem properties in the last couple of years to put me off for life :o

The solicitor who acted in the '1.3bn rent' story should be struck off (assuming he didnt point it out, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did its just the buyer didn't read anything they received - the vast majority of people buying houses read almost none of the paperwork from their solicitor and sign on the dotted line without a care in the world. It's quite strange).

As for the costs of buying freeholds, its luck of the draw whether you get a decent/fair company or not. Where I live a massive proportion of properties and land is leasehold with the freehold owned by the descendant company of a Lord a couple of hundred years ago. They have pretty ridiculous covenants imposed on most properties but to be fair they sell the freeholds for a reasonable price. For now...
 
Skillmister said:
(assuming he didnt point it out, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did its just the buyer didn't read anything they received - the vast majority of people buying houses read almost none of the paperwork from their solicitor and sign on the dotted line without a care in the world. It's quite strange).
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Lot of people in this country for a long time have been insulated from real consequences and often can get away with blaming someone else.
 
Rroff said:
Lot of people in this country for a long time have been insulated from real consequences and often can get away with blaming someone else.
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One that will live with me for a long time was a couple buying a big house in the middle of nowhere for the best part of 400k. There were countless reasons why they shouldn't buy it, and countless things that if I hadn't pointed out would likely bite us (our insurers) in the ass in years to come. No doubt they'll try it anyway when it goes pear shaped but anyway... Sent them a 4 page letter which was all reasons and explanations why they shouldn't buy it with a first line in bold saying "read this in full" etc... Last line said to arrange an appointment to come in and sign contracts etc if they still wanted to proceed. Fast forward to the meeting and i ask if they were happy with all the issues in our letter. "oh we didn't really read it" was the reply. **** me...
 
I would never buy leasehold. There is a Taylor Wimpey estate near me and it's all leasehold along with yearly service charges for maintaining the grass verges and communal parking bays, stuff the council would do if adopted.

It's just all a money making scam.
 
Yup this is my day job and it's predominantly Local Authority at fault - don't want to take on responsibility for new estates but happy to receive Council Tax. Lots of new estates have really complex legal provisions and restrictions and when you look through it the main purpose is to cut the grass in communal areas of the estate! Huge costs and headaches because Councils won't take this on.
 
I read that article and was quite shocked. As I read it, it seemed to have undertones of a mis-selling scandal. If I remember rightly, the person in the article opted not to buy the leasehold at the first opportunity because of a lack of funds available at the time (just moved house, quite understandable), but then was stung with an offer multiple times higher a few years later when she was in a better position to buy it. I dare say that if they had been properly advised in the first case about how the price could change in the future, they would have looked a bit harder to buy the leasehold upfront.
 
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