Rent Charges
If you have any queries, please contact us HERE or the Frequently Asked Questions below might help.
To pay your rent charge you will need your outstanding balance and your property reference number.
If you have any queries, please contact us HERE or the Frequently Asked Questions below might help.
To pay your rent charge you will need your outstanding balance and your property reference number.
The arrears are payable by the current owner of the property irrespective of the period of ownership. If you have just moved into the property and have arrears it would be appropriate to contact your solicitor or conveyancer who acted for you as they may have made provision for them to be paid.
We collect different types of Rent Charges including Ground Rents on Leasehold properties and Chief Rents on Freehold properties. Details of the rent will be in your deeds to the property.
Some of these stories are quite alarming but please don’t worry. Whilst we can technically increase the annual rent at the end of the current term, all our leases are 999 years from when they were first sold (largely between 1920 and 1970).
Some deeds require you to seek permission from us to carry out alterations but not all do so its important to check your deeds before paying for permission. Even if the deeds say that you need our permission, we do not insist on it and many people only request retrospective permission if their solicitor instructs them to do so when selling the property.
Most deeds state that you need to provide formal Notice of the new owners details. Most solicitors insist that this is done and that we send them a signed copy of the Notice to confirm receipt. We do not charge for this but ask for a donation of £10 to be made to our nominated charity ‘Cheshire Search and Rescue’.
If you have a Freehold property and pay a Chief Rent you can buy the Rentcharge and Covenants. This is a relatively straightforward process and costs vary depending on the annual rent and if there are any arrears. By way of example, a property with an annual charge of £5 per year would be £99, £10 per year would be £149. You can tell if your property is Freehold if the front cover of your deeds says ‘Conveyance’. Please contact us if you wish to proceed.
If you have a leasehold property and pay a Ground Rent there is a significant amount of work that needs to be done to transfer ownership as we are effectively selling a piece of land. Unfortunately, this increases the price significantly due to legal and Land Registry Fees. Please contact us for a quote. You can tell if your property is Leasehold if the front cover of your deeds says ‘Lease’ or ‘Demise’.
If you have a leasehold property that is an underlease then we don’t own the whole freehold and therefore are not in a position to sell it to you. Basically, we collect the rent from individual properties and then we pay an annual rent for the whole estate. You can tell if your property is an underlease if the front cover of your deeds says ‘Sub Demise’ or ‘Sub Lease’.