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an unknown buyer may tripple the ground rent
This isn’t possible, I don’t think?
The GR is fixed during the lease term and you have the right to extend the lease w/ peppercorn ground rent subject to various bits of lawyering.
NickCJ-
Yeah we need to dig out the original contract, it's girlfriend's flat so she signed the papers. I've been searching about legal limits and I couldn't find anything definitive. Do you know if someone buy's the freehold will they have to continue with the same lease agreement or will they be able to negotiate a new one?
Sumo
Sharkstar
Well this is fun, just got a letter from the freeholder saying they've started a section 5a proposal to sell on the freehold. They've priced the freehold at ~60% the value of the flat meaning 1) it's too expensive to buy and 2) even if it we did buy it the flat may never rise in value enough to match the total cost before the heat death of the universe. So now we've got to worry about a service charge that's gone up 50% in 2 years for no apparent reason, a main boiler that we've been paying for maintenance on but turns out has been defective for 3 years, a whole new heating system being put in the building with roughly 4 more months left of work, and now an unknown buyer may tripple the ground rent and tank the value of the flat just as we want to sell it.