YOU HAVE YOUR SAY
DON’T BE RIPPED OFF TWICE
EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some from our article about how new leasehold contracts which promise to limit charges may not be all they seem:
PEOPLE need to be aware that the leasehold is something you cannot control. When these are owned by large companies, the only drive is share price and dividend. You are a cash cow and a source of income.
S. Y., Nottingham.
IN SCOTLAND, leaseholds were outlawed and all remaining contracts were converted into outright ownership. They should do the same for the rest of the UK. This is an archaic practice that can be abused.
D. B., by email.
THE Government needs to step up here. What’s the point in it badgering people to get on the property ladder when oldfashioned practices such as this still exist?
H. N., Derby.
PEOPLE should be challenging their conveyancing solicitors if they failed to advise them of the implications of a leasehold property.
M. D., email.
IF BUYERS were told, two years after completing, they could purchase their freehold for a certain price, that would be good enough. You should be able to challenge in court the company that purchased your freehold.
G. Y., London.
IF PEOPLE refused to buy leasehold properties, landlords would have to stop putting these ridiculous clauses in the contracts. As long as people keep signing them, the contracts will continue to become more restrictive.
M. V., Portsmouth.
IT ALL looks like a moneymaking scheme for the developers. You’d have thought the homeowners would have been given an option to buy the lease if it was to be sold on. Solicitors should point all this out early on.
A. P., Bournemouth.
÷ WRITE to Tony Hazell at Ask Tony, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email asktony@dailymail.co.uk — please include your daytime phone number, postal address and a separate note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Tony Hazell. We regret we cannot reply to individual letters. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.