Closed petition I want to stop housing developers selling new build houses as leaseholds

Closed on 3 May 2017

I want the big house builders to stop selling houses as leaseholds. This is adding costs to home buyers and making their houses difficult to re-sell and expensive to maintain. Unlike Flats there is no Legal need to adopt this practice it is purely driven by greed and is an unregulated activity.

Developers have been selling detached and semi-detached houses as leasehold, with clauses which allow the ground rent to double every 10 years. The freeholds are then sold on to private companies which extract the ground rent, charge high fees if a homeowner wishes to make alterations, and refuse to sell the freehold except for a huge premium. Homebuyers have been left with houses they cannot sell as lenders will no longer offer mortgages against them because of the ground rent clauses.