A look at the potential consequences
Currently, in England and Wales, properties are most often owned
as either freehold or leasehold. Freehold owners have absolute and
permanent ownership of land and/or property, whereas leasehold
owners own land and/or property for a set number of years, on a
lease from a landlord who owns the freehold.
Leasehold ownership has attracted a significant amount of
attention in recent years, especially on the issue of ground rent.
It came to light that a significant number of leases contained
onerous provisions for tenants, such as expensive service charges
and fees payable to the landlord by way of permission to carry out
certain works on - or legal dealings over – the property.
Most recently, it has been the practise of rapidly escalating
ground rent provisions that has caught the headlines, such clauses
state that the ground rent payable by the tenant – whilst
often starting low - will increase every X years of the term,
