The Ground Rent Scandal
The Ground Rent Scandal
For day two of Leasehold Made Simple week Ian Mitchell discusses The Ground Rent Scandal; providing an explanation on what the ground rent scandal is, the governments involvement in re-writing the law around ground rents and advice for leaseholders on how to exercise their rights.
Now I know about the issues (National Leasehold Campaign) solid balanced overview – pity this kind of information was not flagged for all Leaseholders a long time ago. The Leasehold misselling issue has only come to light because of the recent attempt to push groundrent and service charges to an extreme. But in fact legacy leasehold houses like mine were sold in the same way and with even less point of sale information. Most people and the BBC until recently, thought Leasehold and groundrent was just about the land. Nobody understood that the house itself was not theirs. Millions are now trapped by older leases and unaffordable freehold enfranchisement costs.
I inherited my parents house which I thought I would live in not sell but discovered it is Leasehold (from 1934) with now 9 years left!! They say I am lucky because the Council freeholder only wants £35,000 ballpark figure (3 years ago).
Only England has this pernicious feudal legacy system of tenure – the rest of Europe is free! Shocking when you see what the situation is and why and how it came about.