The Mellors say they were told that although the house was leasehold, it was on a reassuringly long lease which could be bought for a few thousand pounds within two years.
By comparing the prices of two identical apartments, one with a freehold and one with a 100-year leasehold, it should be possible to estimate how much value home-buyers place on events 100 years in the future.As expected, shorter leaseholds trade at larger discounts to freeholds; leaseholds of 100 years face a 10% discount, whilst those of over 700 years face none.
The majority of the 320,000 homes expected to be built in London over the next decade will be leasehold flats, it adds.
Curiously for someone wholly trusted by the Thatcherite right, he sat as a crossbencher, a position that enabled him in 1993 to condemn John Major's "totally deplorable" leasehold reform because it "violated the sacredness of contract" with landlords.
If the property you are buying is leasehold (most flats are), it means the land it stands on is not part of the sale.
During the year ended December 31 , 2012 it acquired leasehold interests covering an aggregate of approximately 17,590 net acres in its key prospect areas.
"I studied law at university and am interested in contracts, so I was shocked to finally be told that it was leasehold when I was already emotionally invested in the property and had booked my moving-in van!" Another reader wrote to us about their experience of buying, and their legal position regarding acquiring the freehold.
He quickly decided that the most convenient route would be to allow the Port Authority, which built the World Trade Center, and the developer Larry Silverstein, who had the leasehold on it, to rebuild more or less what they had lost, with a few extras, such as a memorial.
In 2002, "commonhold" was introduced as an alternative to leasehold, but the CentreForum report found it had failed almost completely.
The administrators said they were continuing to work on realising the value of the remaining assets, which included IT systems, machinery and leasehold properties, as well as the firm's debtor book.
Labour MP Barry Gardiner said: "There is a real sense of growing momentum and cross-party consensus on this issue – it is now time to revisit leasehold reform.
