Property Homeowners face huge bills when leases expire

Those unaware of how the system works can be left stumping up thousands despite paying off a mortgage. Diane Taylor reports

- Diane Taylor

Icylyn Goddard, 86, has lived in her maisonette in Wembley, north London, for more than 40 years. She finished paying off the mortgage on it 20 years ago, but still does not own her own home and was recently told she would need to spend more than £200,000 to ensure she can spend the rest of her life there.

Goddard is a leaseholder and has 11 years left on her lease. In July, lawyers for the freeholder of her building told her that she needed to pay £212,000 plus valuers' fees to extend it for 125 years. She was told that if an agreement was not completed within three months, the terms offered to her would be revised.

She says that a recent valuation of her home found that with a long lease it would be worth £350,000. Paying about two-thirds of that to extend the existing lease will be very difficult for her. But if she does not do so, ultimately it will expire and her home will become the property of the freeholder.

“I believe I'm not the only elderly person facing this kind of financial challenge despite having paid off my mortgage years ago,” Goddard says. “The situation I'm in is distressing and unjust. The choice I am faced with is either to be forced out of my own home or to be subjected to unreasonable financial demands because of the terms of the leasehold agreement.”

She feels that the situation is a “legal scam”. She says: “It is causing me anxiety, sleepless nights, loss of appetite and grief overload.”

Goddard is right that there are others who have been through similar. Levi Thomas and his wife bought their home in north-west London in 1974. He assumed that once he had finished paying off the mortgage, the home belonged to him and his family. But instead, since 2008 he has been paying £1,040 a month to live in the same house - a big strain on the 86-year-old's budget - and he has nothing to leave his children.