Ground rents will be scrapped with a new right to extend leases to 990 years, and they will be reduced to zero in case of new retirement homes
Nearly 4.5million leaseholders in England will be ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ better off as a result of laws to be unveiled today by the Housing Secretary.
Robert Jenrick said his attempt to make it cheaper and simpler for leaseholders to buy their properties is the biggest property law reform since Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy revolution in the 1980s.
Ground rents will be scrapped for millions with a new right to extend leases to 990 years. They will also be reduced to zero on all new retirement homes.
The Government said the changes ‘could save households from thousands to tens of thousands of pounds’.
Mr Jenrick will also pledge to boost moves to allow residents of flats to take charge of running their blocks, freeing them from sky-high maintenance charges by landlords accused of ‘ripping off’ leaseholders.
He wants to increase the number of commonhold agreements, a little-known form of ownership that allows residents of apartment blocks to maintain it themselves or employ a maintenance firm to do it.
It would mean that if the company fails to do the job properly, the residents could sack them.
Leaseholders groups welcomed Mr Jenrick’s ‘anti rip-off landlords charter’ and warned him not to let powerful landlords block it.
It has been claimed that 100,000 families cannot sell their homes because their contracts are so unfair.
Mr Jenrick said the Grenfell Tower disaster, in which 72 people died in a blaze in London in 2017, highlighted the need for reform.
There have been a series of botched attempts to reform leasehold laws in the last 50 years.
Some landlords have sold on freeholds to third parties who only allow homeowners to buy them out for exorbitant fees.