Written evidence submitted by Miss Sophie Gallagher [LHR 457]

I am writing to talk about the leasehold reform, me and my boyfriend recently bought a house, instead of buying a first time one that would last a couple of years we took a big leap to buy hopefully our forever home. When it came to buying there was only 56years left on the property and no mortgage will let you go for anything under 80years left, so the sellers then had to negotiate with the leaseholder or go the long way around which they didn’t want to wait long, in the end it went from £17 a year to £100 for the first 33years, £200 for the next 33years and then £400 for the last 33years and he would only extend it to 99years. This to me is shocking that they can do that, I understand they own the land and can charge what they want but this needs to stop or have a low cap on it as anyone buying a house has to think about all the bills that need to be paid then to add ground rent on to pay someone a large amount of money to do what? Nothing! It is hard to find a lot of free hold properties, the sellers have asked this man plenty times if they could buy and he refuses but now all it does for us is put us in a position we are paying extremely over most the properties in the area and he charges £3500 just to extend which I think is ridiculous as it is not a fair deal and gives us the same problem if we want to sell or if we have kids it will be their problem when they either stay in it or sell it.

I personally don’t understand paying someone to live on the land you pay all the bills for, there needs to be something in place like what you are doing to get the leaseholds to £0 or near enough, this would be ideal but I don’t see it being accepted as people want to make money of everyone for nothing, but if that does not get accepted maybe have a plan B, there should be a £50 a year max leasehold, it cannot be doubled or changed it can only be up to £50 and that is the cap, leaseholders if requested to buy the leasehold have to do so for a reasonable fee, so even if that is capped to say they can charge anything up to £2000 or at least an amount a working person paying bills and trying to live could save a little here and there to save to pay for it.

It is 2018 now, maybe people are buying houses later in life as salaries have not increased by much but everything else is going up but at least with bills you are paying for something like gas, electric, water, tv, petrol… but with leasehold what do you pay that amount for? What do we get out of it? Nothing! If we want to extend or do anything we have to pay them as well as actually the people building. We need to support each other instead of just taking anything we can disregarding how it impacts other people, there are worse cases than mine but I think for everyone there needs to be a stop or at least a cap so it doesn’t get out of hand.

September 2018