Unregistered ground rents for sale on a problem estate

The problem

The vendor approached us with unregistered ground rents for sale hoping that we would be able to sort out problems with the estate of a deceased family member. The family member had inherited unregistered freehold ground rents on 20 houses subject to 999 year leases; the ground rents (which had been created by an ancestor who carried out the original development) had been passed down from generation to generation in the family. The rents had not been collected for many years and the names and addresses of many of the lessees were out of date.

The solution

We assisted in the process of obtaining a grant of representation for the vendor so that good title to the ground rents could be established. We then prepared a statutory declaration for the vendor detailing past collections of ground rent. On the back of the statutory declaration we completed the purchase and subsequently obtained registration of the freeholds at the Land Registry.