What is freehold land?

Is it land I can build my home on, or ? 

I think it means you actually buy the land, as opposed to leasehold.  Where you buy a lease on the land.

I think it means you actually buy the land, as opposed to leasehold.  Where you buy a lease on the land.

That's it!   The terms can refer to both the land and/or the buildings.

Freehold means you own it outright.  Leasehold means that you are buying a lease for the property which will one day expire.  When the current leaseholder sells to you, you will be buying whatever remaining time there is on that lease.  For example, if the original lease taken out in 1950 was for 99 years, then the price you pay today would be for the remaining 43 years.

Hiya,

there is an extra element to this which is relatively rare

My rental apartment has a lease as it's a purpose built block, however the deal is that as the owner of a property I'm also a part owner of the freehold as well. As there's only 6 flats in the block, I own a sixth of the freehold.

I guess I should get a 6th of the profits made from the land - but I'm not entirely sure of what exactly the benefit it is for me in this scenario, I'll have to speak to someone who knows...

Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!

This basically means that you share responsibility for the upkeep of communal areas and things like the roof/drainage etc, which means that if there is a problem with the maintainance of the building as a whole you will probably be liable for 1/6 of the cost of the repairs.

If the whole block is sold as one (which seldom happens) then yes, you should get 1/6 of the profits of the sale of the land, and when you come to sell the flat then you will be able to take into account the increase in value of the land as well as the property itself.

The other advantage is that you won't have to pay ground rent, as you would have if someone else had owned the freehold.

Vicky

I think we've lost sight of the original question:

Is it land I can build my home on, or ? 

That would all depend on planning permission, so it's best not to assume that you would be able to build on it.

I think we've lost sight of the original question:

That would all depend on planning permission, so it's best not to assume that you would be able to build on it. 

Definitely.  The issue of whether it's freehold or leasehold land has nothing to do with the rules about whether you would be allowed to build or not.  There is plenty of agricultural or woodland which you could buy freehold, but with no chance of the local council granting planning consent for a house.

If you are considering buying land for development, you should check to make sure that there are no restrictive covenants in place that would restrict you.

Vicky

A tangent here but did you know that my home state of Maryland is only 1 of 2 States that has leasehold properties?  There's been a few articles in the Baltimore Sun of late talking about this "Arcane law from England" and how Lord Baltimore & Cecil Calvert set up this system.  It didn't take off in most other states but apparently with the huge jumps in property prices in the US there are some landlords now trying to evict residents in cases where leaseholds have run out or rents have been missed.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-te.bz.groundrent13dec13,0,3979658.story?coll=bal-local-headlines