New Owner Of Leasehold

[WendyN]

Original owner of leasehold sent out bills every 6 months for the first year or two and then stopped and did not demand the ground rent. New owner has taken over the leasehold and is demanding all back payments. Can he legally do this or can he only demand future payments be made?

The back payments go back about 6 years.

[Peter Pedant]

I hope a few others will post here - the usual suspects and some of my favourites !

Ground rent (over the last 300 - 400 y) has been subject of various rip-off and you have to know the rules. Once you are up to date, the current rent only is payable altho unscrupulous owners may demand two or three years up front. They may demand but the status is only an 'ask'.

When I bought my own house, my lawyer demanded six years unpaid ground rent from the seller up front, and to my amazement someone popped up a few years later and ddemanded the back rent. So some back rent is payable.

But was mine limited to six years ? or was it just that I was six years in arrears ?

There should be someone who knows the answer.

Oh, and as well as demand a year up front habitually - but I only pay six monthly, he 'forgot' one year of my payments and tried to get me to pay it again.

You have to watch these people.....and when instead I sent a scan of the cheque for THAT year - he didnt even say oops sorry

[craft1948]

It may depend on whether the new owner bought the debts..........

[factor-fiction]

I think they can't go back more than six years if they hadn't asked in that period but for a period less than that I'd have thought the money is still owed so they can claim it. If the amount is significant though I'd ask to be able to spread it over say 2 years

[joko]

How can it be owed to them and claimed, if they did not own the place before?

surely he can only expect to be paid for the time he owns it!

if the original owners chose not to seek rent then that's up to them and nothing to do with him... ?

[boxtops]

I'm with joko on this - I owned a leasehold property at one point, and I could only claim ground rent for the period when I owned it, the period before that was none of my business. It's up to the owner to claim regularly (unless of course the seller declared it that you owed the money and the buyer bought the debt).

Why didn't you just pay it at the due time anyway? - you knew you owed it, even if it wasn't invoiced to you.

[RATTER15]

It may also depend if the debt is owed to a company or a private individual.

[themas]

A lot of leases do not specify that ground rent has to be invoiced. The lessee is responsible for paying it whether it is invoiced or not.

You owe the money and haven't paid it. The only issue is whether you owe it to the present freeholder or the previous one. In my view you either pay up or else you ask the freeholder (in writing) to provide you with proof that the money is owed to him & not to the previous person. For this purpose proof is not necessarily just the proof that he bought the freehold. If that transaction said nothing about unpaid ground rent then it is still an open question as to which of them you owe the money to.