I have never paid ground rent!

[WorkingAllDayLong]

I has just dawned on me after buying and living in my flat for over 10 years that I have never paid ground rent. It is a leasehold property.

Am I supposed to receive an annual invoice? Who sends it? Who am I supposed to pay it to?

I am a bit confused now.

Mine was paid by direct debit with my mortgage payment. I did however receive an invoice each year.

Maybe ask your neighbors how they pay it.

Bugger mumsnet Americanised my Neighbours! I hate that 🤣

Sometimes it can be a shared lease with one person in the dwellings responsible for payment. They are meant to collect the other dwellings portion. If it is a peppercorn amount they may not bother. Do you know how much it is op

Actually I’m sorry I was thinking about the maintenance charge. The ground rent was included in that. Could it be in with your maintenance charge?

I have no idea how much it is supposed to be but wouldn’t be surprised if it is a peppercorn amount. I don’t have any monthly maintenance charges and we pay any maintenance ourselves.

It should be in your lease how much your ground rent is. If you don't have it you can request a copy from your mortgage provider or land registry.

I would look into this if I were you just in case there are any clauses for not paying ground rent.

There was a case in the news where a lady who owned the freehold of a pair of flats was able to legally claim the other flat because the person who owned it did work without asking her permission and without Planning I think.

Different from your OP but I would be wary just in case.

Ours has to be paid to a local estate agents (not the one we bought from) it's about £2 a year and they say themselves it's not worth the hassle of chasing people. We've just had to go in and pay for the last 5 years as we've sold the house.

I should think either it's a peppercorn, or so small an amount they can't be bothered to collect it, or else you've got an absentee freeholder - apparently not uncommon. We thought we had that situation when we bought a flat (just two in the building) where the freeholder hadn't demanded any GR for several years from the previous owner. (Freeholder had owned it before him.). It was thought that he'd gone to live abroad - nobody knew where he was. GR was around £150 a year.

We went on to buy the FH of both flats, and during the process it transpired that the FHolder wasn't absent at all, just hiding under another name a few miles away, because of debts attached to the FH.

He then pretended he'd been unsuccessfully invoicing for ground rent for several years, which was a lie (he was evidently as dodgy as they come) and although he'd never invoiced us or the previous owner (because he was hiding from creditors) we had by law to pay him 7 years' worth of GR before the FH could be transferred to us.
Worth it to get shot of him for good, though!

You need to read the lease as suggested by a pp. Ground rent can be payable without you having to be invoiced for it. Non-payment can be a ground for forfeiture of the lease.

Even peppercorn ground rent is normally collected

Mine was only £1 per year, but I still paid a STO for it, separately to the service / maintenance charge STO

The invoice was included with the service charge though, so if you don't pay that, maybe it genuinely isn't worth collecting

Check your lease and the purchase contract
My ground rent was specified on the purchase contract

A peppercorn ground rent isn't collected as it would literally be a case of taking a peppercorn from the jar and sellotaping it to a letter!

If it’s literally described as peppercorn, as GU24 has said, nothing is payable.

Only 6 years of backdated rent can be demanded. Good summary advice here: www.lease-advice.org/article/ground-rent-a-demanding-notice/

Our amount was contained in lease and invoiced by freeholder, Victorian flat.