Last week the Competitions and Markets Authority wrote to developers Countryside and Taylor Wimpey requiring them to remove contract terms that mean leaseholders have to pay ground rents that double every 10 or 15 years.

The National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) has welcomed the announcement which they say the CMA has directed at what they call ” two of the worst offenders in the leasehold scandal”. A not for profit organisation, the NLC was created four years ago by three women campaigners, Katie Kendrick, Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire, who found themselves trapped by unfair and extortionate leasehold arrangements.

The campaign says that the systematic mis-selling of new-build properties with high and doubling ground rents, which are a charge for no service, has led to leaseholders living in properties that are unmortgageable and unsellable. 

NLC founder and spokeswoman Katie Kendrick, a children’s nurse from Ellesmere Port said:

“This announcement proves how unfair these contract terms are.  We are delighted that CMA is calling this out and making the key players accountable for creating leases with ground rent terms that are unfair.  However, ground rents are only one of the ways for freehold investors to make money at the expense of leaseholders. 

“Leaseholders are navigating a feudal system that is stacked against them with rip-off permission fees, escalating service charges and, for many new build estates, estate management fees. 

“The big developers could do more to provide redress for the systematic mis-selling of leasehold homes; they choose not to”.

Jo Darbyshire, the Managing Director of a pensions administration company, is a co-founder of the NLC and lives in a Taylor Wimpey property that was sold in 2010 with ground rent of £295, doubling every 10 years. 

Darbyshire says:  “Last year I converted my doubling ground rent to RPI using the Taylor Wimpey Ground Rent Assistance Scheme.  I had run out of hope that anyone was going to help me, and we wanted to do some structural work on the house.  To avoid paying the freeholder a ludicrous permission fee to do this, I knew I had to buy the freehold, and converting to RPI would make that cheaper.  Now I could be in a worse position than if I hadn’t done that.  It sums up this leasehold scandal perfectly; whichever way you turn it feels like the odds are stacked against you.”

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. 

“Today’s announcement is great news for leaseholders who still have doublers.  People will have lots of questions and this could take time, as many of the developers have sold the freeholds on to offshore investors. 

“We hope that this announcement will help every leaseholder that has onerous doubling ground rent, regardless of whether they bought the property from new.  I know from my own difficult and expensive escape from the leasehold trap how much anguish it causes.”

However, it transpires that the CMA may need to more likely have to address existing leases rather than new ones.

Countryside is reported as saying that it has “sold no properties with doubling ground rent clauses since 2017”

Taylor Wimpey’s has claimed it stopped selling leases that doubled ground rent every 10 years on new developments from 2012.

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.

CMA requires Countryside and Taylor Wimpey to remove leasehold terms