The sale of houses on a leasehold basis has been criticised in some quarters because of its apparent unfairness to leaseholders. Leaseholders, in contrast to freeholders, lease a property for only a number of years. The question then being, what happens at the end of the term? Enfranchisement rights provide leaseholders who hold a lease
Tag Archives: enfranchisement
A brace of cases on the right to enfranchise
The last two months have seen two key appeals in which the court was required to decide whether the tenant of a particular type of building should enjoy the statutory right to acquire the freehold of a house. This right is enshrined in the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. The properties, and the questions for the court
Dolphin sees literal meaning of statute triumph over porpoise
In Westbrook Dolphin Square Limited -v- Friends Life Limited [2014] EWHC 2433 (Ch) the High Court has paved the way for one commercial owner to compel the transfer of another’s freehold property to it, by the process of collective enfranchisement. Under the collective enfranchisement regime created in the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act
Discussing Development Disputes
Anyone looking out of their office window in central London will see that the development market is back. From our offices in Holborn, we have been able to see (and feel!) the works going on at the new Goldman Sachs headquarters on Farringdon Road, AXA Real Estate’s 12 storey scheme at Holborn Viaduct now occupied
Supreme Court stops occupiers from enfranchising commercial premises
In a brave move, the Supreme Court has allowed appeals by two London landlords in Day v Hosebay and Howard de Walden v Lexgorge and clarified what can reasonably be called a house under the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. Senior Associate, Tim Reid, applauded the unanimous decision for its clarification of the law: “It has