Independent report

Leasehold home ownership: buying your freehold or extending your lease

Recommendations to transform home ownership for millions of people in England and Wales by improving the process by which leaseholders can buy the freehold or extend their lease (“enfranchisement”).

From:
Law Commission
Published
21 July 2020

Applies to England and Wales

Documents

Leasehold home ownership: buying your freehold or extending your lease

Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-2061-1, HC 584

PDF, 7.62 MB, 860 pages

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Details

Our project on leasehold enfranchisement involved a review of leaseholders’ rights to:

  • purchase the freehold of their house
  • participate, with other leaseholders, in the collective purchase of the freehold of a group of flats
  • extend the lease of their house or flat

The recommendations in our report on leasehold enfranchisement include:

  • providing a new right to leaseholders of both houses and flats to a lease extension for a term of 990 years, with no ongoing ground rent under the extended lease
  • providing a new right for leaseholders to “buy out” the ground rent under their lease without also having to extend the length of their lease
  • removing the requirement for leaseholders to have owned their leases for two years before exercising enfranchisement rights and allowing flat owners to buy the freehold of a block where up to 50% of the building is commercial space
  • making it easier and cheaper for leaseholders of flats to enfranchise by providing for groups of flat owners to acquire multiple buildings in one claim and allowing leaseholders to require landlords to take “leasebacks” of units within the building which are not let to leaseholders participating in the claim
  • ensuring that a leaseholder is protected against the imposition of onerous or unreasonable obligations on acquisition of the freehold title to his or her home
  • replacing the various procedures for making enfranchisement claims with one, streamlined procedure
  • providing that all enfranchisement disputes and issues should be decided by the Tribunal
  • eliminating or controlling leaseholders’ liability to pay their landlord’s costs, in place of the current requirement for leaseholders to pay their landlord’s uncapped costs, which can equal or exceed the enfranchisement price.

Further details are available on the Law Commission website

Published 21 July 2020