The National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) welcomes the announcement from the CMA detailing that, as part of their ongoing work into leasehold mis-selling, they have reached agreement with 15 freeholders that bought leases with onerous ground rent terms from Countryside.
NLC founder and spokeswoman Katie Kendrick, a children’s nurse from Ellesmere Port said:
“Today’s announcement demonstrates the continued success that the CMA are achieving, making good progress in holding developers and freeholders to account for their part in this leasehold scandal and removing onerous doubling ground rents. We are incredibly proud that our years of campaigning and publicising the unfairness of onerous ground rents and other leasehold abuses, is making a difference. However, ground rents are only one of the pitfalls that leaseholders face. Leasehold tenure must be abolished.”
Jo Darbyshire, the Managing Director of a pensions administration company, is a co-founder of the NLC and lives in a Taylor Wimpey house that was sold in 2010 with ground rent of £295, doubling every 10 years. She converted the doubling ground rent to RPI and bought the freehold in December 2021. Darbyshire says:
“The CMA is determined to abolish these unfair contract terms. We urge all developers and freeholders who have not yet reached agreement with the CMA to drop these onerous ground rent terms. Ground rents are a charge for no service. It’s clear to see by the structural nature of the companies named today how sophisticated this leasehold scandal is – where offshore shell companies have been set up to profit from onerous ground rent terms created on our homes.”
Cath Williams, a university lecturer from Liverpool, and co-founder of the NLC also bought a house with onerous ground rent from Taylor Wimpey. It cost her over £15k to buy the freehold after it was sold on to an investor. Williams commented:
“Freeholders agreeing to remove all escalation from onerous leasehold contracts is another step forward. It will significantly reduce the cost to buy the freehold or extend the lease and ensures that any leaseholders that have converted to RPI from doubling are treated equitably. It validates what we at the NLC have been saying for years – converting doubling ground rents to RPI is not the answer. NLC members report daily examples that RPI leases are problematic”
The National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) was launched to abolish feudal leasehold laws which affect over four million people in England and Wales (one in five households) and campaigns to end leasehold tenure for houses and make Commonhold mandatory for flats. The NLC has over 23k members in its Facebook group.
