Agency Express reveals why the future is bright for leaseholders in 2022

The estate agency board services provider recently posted a blog to the Agency Express website, detailing the key positive changes coming for leaseholders.

In this blog, the van based franchise explained that the start of 2022 saw the introduction of “new government plans to protect leaseholders, enabling them to take back control and ownership of their building”. These reforms to the leasehold system are expected to come into effect later in 2022, and Chartered Surveyors South East Leasehold is confident that they will leave leaseholders much less “at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords who [take] the opportunity to charge high premiums” for things like lease extensions and ground rent.

Escalating ground rent is a big issue for leasehold property owners, but thankfully, “Current drafting of the new Bill will change the law surrounding ground rents on ‘Regulated Leases’, which will be capped at a ‘peppercorn’ or zero. Additionally, material fines could be imposed on freeholders attempting to charge ground rents to leaseholders.” This reform will affect Regulated Leases “granted after the date the legislation comes into effect”, including shared ownership leases. It won’t apply to Excepted Leases.

Government reform will also enable longer lease extensions. As Agency Express explained it, “With the new changes, both house and flat owners can extend the lease to a standard 990 years with the ground rent set to zero. It’s a change that provides much more security to leasehold property owners and could save them considerable amounts of money in the long-term.” In the future, more change is likely to come for leasehold property owners, including a potential future abolition of Marriage Value, and a potential future expansion of the pool of qualifying tenants.

All in all, Agency Express concluded, “2022 looks set to provide a positive shift for leaseholders and now that the laws are being amended, it’s likely that connected issues will start to be reassessed to reflect the best interests of property owners. There are now calls for changes to the use of commonhold [...] and shared ownership schemes.” Find out more about this well-informed estate agency board services franchise via Agency Express’s profile page, which you’ll discover linked above.