Has your house lease expired - or is it due to soon?- elderly man forced to rent their house that they've paid their mortgage off

[cakeorwine]

‘I was told to pay £212,000’: property owners face huge bills when lease is due to expire | Leasehold | The Guardian

An elderly man bought a house with a lease. Paid their mortgage off but then the lease expired.

The company that owns the lease then said they should pay to rent on his property (albeit below the market rate)

Someone else tried to extend their lease which had 11 years left on it.

Because the property had increased in value, the cost of extending it would be £210,000. At the age of 86.

I have a lease and I know that it there is a cut off point of 80 years left - when the marriage value kicks in which increases the cost of extending the lease.

There is talk of a bill to look at Leases - it can't come soon enough.

"Lawyers for the freeholders who own the freehold to Goddard’s property did not respond to requests for comment."

I think England is the only country that has land leases. It’s not right at all.

They have solicitors when they buy a property

I dont know in real terms how many are aware of 'these things' but I would hope that buying a massive asset like a property either with or without a mortgage, they would make themselves aware

although I do not agree with the leasehold system as it stands, this is buyer beware, these issues and matters are not unknown and certainly not unknown to the buyer and owner of the property!!!

I dont have a huge amount of sympathy for someone who willfully ignores something like that or doesnt educate themselves about something they own. Its like being a car owner/driver and saying you know nothing about tax or mot requirements.

Not to mention the bloody management companies
Mine is a 4 apartment block. They turn up and "garden" which takes 7 mins by hacking the grass back which doesn't even get time to grow as they come too often. No shared garden
The windows get washed

Over 2 grand a year, in the NW

I don't get this thread. You/he bought a leasehold with so many years left, lived there a long time, now surprised the years left on the lease are lower or non-existent. The phrase no-shit sherlock springs to mind.

The conveyancing solicitor will have stated it's leasehold, as probably the EA has too, but ultimately if you don't understand a term when handing over vast sums of money then you ask for clarification rather than ignore.

Do you think there are some people on here who may have leases but not be aware of the potential issues or who may have parents in similar situations?

But who will have read this and started to investigate for themselves?

Even if they bought the property 50 years ago it would have been cheaper due to the short lease.

I’m in Scotland so we don’t have this, but I know about it and how it works. How can people living in England and Wales not know?

Well I suppose I meant so cheap that its like paying rent for your final years

You could buy a flat for about 50k where the lease is about to run out say in the next 10/20 years, thats a gamble for you if you're in your 70s and dont care about 'having property' for any reason

Depending on your circumstances the money you pay for the flat, might be more convenient than staying in a big old house taht you cant manage any more, it may be cheaper you're then happy with the below market rent you'll be charged if you live long enough for the property to revert to ownership by the freeholder, or you can claim HB for the rent

Do you think there are some people on here who may have leases but not be aware of the potential issues or who may have parents in similar situations?
They will have be told about this when they bought their house. It's up to them to find out more or remember to renew. Sure, an article might help remind someone to renew but you cannot blame others for not remembering or understanding the lease which is the over-riding feeling I'm getting from this thread. The onus is on the buyer to fully understand or ask for clarification if they don't. If they are unaware that there will be a big, and probably expensive, issue to resolve once the lease runs out then maybe they should stay away from anything that requires more than basic thinking.

House leases round our way are 999 years with a minor (£30 ish) annual ground rent. I guess they are subject to legal restrictions, because the grasping freeholders cannot raise the ground rent. Issues only arise when the ground rent is paid late, or just forgotten about, then it can be an expensive headache.

People in their forever homes tend to buy their freehold, it’s only a few hundred pounds. It’s those in the cheaper, first time buyer type homes that don’t deem that worthwhile, either because they don’t have a few hundred to spare, or because they are not planning to stay and a nearly one thousand year lease won’t affect the value of the house.

So you end up with grubby individuals and companies owning full streets of freeholds of lower value properties. There is no reason why houses need to be leasehold (flats may be a different matter). Any decent government would abolish this nasty and totally unnecessary system.