© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Regarding ourselves as a property-owning democracy, we're puzzled that so many Europeans still rent their flats. But if you're a leaseholder, you're a tenant too - you just pay all your rent up-front. And, once your 99-year tenancy expires, your flat goes back to the landlord so he can let it to someone else.
In the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Japan, if you buy a flat you actually own it. No lease, no wasting asset, no landlord. Simple. But we're still shackled to an inequitable system that originated in the Middle Ages. And it's proving hard to shake off.
True, if you enfranchise, you rid yourself of an exterior landlord and conserve the value of your investment. But, even though you're a shareholder in your freehold company, you're still a tenant, bound by a lease.
The government's new commonhold system was supposed finally to bring us in line with other countries, with flat-owners owning their homes outright, and one simple document, the Commonhold Agreement, controlling the running of the common parts. But up to last December there were only seven commonholds registered in England. And all are small schemes. What's holding us up?
Commonhold is just a dream for existing blocks, because every single leaseholder must agree to give up their lease. But it's also been problematic for developers, since most schemes must now include affordable housing, often shared-ownership homes. And shared-ownership traditionally requires a long lease between the housing association and the share-owner. While commonhold, for obvious reasons, outlaws long leases.
However, there's been a breakthrough. Major developer Crest Nicholson has embarked on a 2,000 home project in Milton Keynes, and, although 30% the housing will be affordable, the development, Oakgrove, will be commonhold. Smart legal thinking has solved the shared-ownership problem
- instead of a lease, the housing association and the share-owner will hold the property in a co-ownership trust.
It's a ray of hope. If commonhold finally takes off, the owners of thousands of new flats due to be built in the next decade could be exactly that - owners, not tenants. Just like flat-owners elsewhere in the world.
Jane Barry
Associate Editor