In a recent article on Ideal Home online, Tamara Kelly, Digital Editor has written an article focusing on leasehold properties. The article features in-depth expert advice on understanding and buying a leasehold property including commentary from Saira Parveen, a real estate solicitor at SA Law.
Saira comments ‘Leasehold has very different legal status from freehold, in fact only giving you a ‘right to occupy’ a property for a stipulated amount of time (for long leases, usually between 99 and 999 years), rather than own it forever'.
'The ‘purchase price’ for a new flat is in fact in law a ‘premium’ payable to the landlord for the right to occupy, and on top of this you will still often (but not always – it depends on the terms of the lease) need to pay ground rent (usually once or twice a year), service charges (your share of repairing and maintaining the common parts of the building, eg structural parts of the building, lifts etc and the grounds of the building) and insurance rents.’
You can read the full article on Ideal Home online here.