Talk:Ground rent

This reads like a legal textbook and the English is impenetrable for the average reader.

This article needs to be rewrittten this to make it at least comprehensible to an average university educated brainiac: many obscure undefined words are used in the definition What is he purpose of Wikipedia anyway? For smarty pants to show off or engage in turf wars?? The best academics make the complex simple to understand, the worst academics obscure the simple in complex language. Rodhas (talk) 00:58, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As someone who didn't attend university (although I work in one) and only has a few "O" levels, I found some of it rather inpenetrable. I then went through it and, after looking up the obscure words, added explanations of terms such as "reversion" and "superficies" or wikilinked them where a full explanation is given elsewhere in wikipedia (e.g. lessee and superinfeudination). Unfortunately the law is full of archaic terms and it's hard to talk about it without using them. What are the words you're referring to that aren't defined? And to answer your question, wikipedia should give comprenhensive coverage of the subject but be understandable to the layman, but sometimes you have to do a bit of work and follow the links. Richerman (talk) 10:26, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Ground rents a good investment?
The is a sentence in the "English law" section which reads "But while a rack rent is generally higher in amount than a ground rent, the latter is usually better secured, as it carries with it the reversionary interest in buildings and improvements put on the ground after the date at which the ground rent was fixed, and accordingly ground rents have been regarded as a good investment". Many ground rents in England are of the order of £5 per annum and the leases were often granted for 999 years. There have been a number of changes to the laws protecting lessees since 1977 making it all but impossible for the landlord to sieze the property from defaulters and those created before 1977 will be extinguished by 2037 anyway, so I really can't see how these would be considered a good investment. Is this text taken from the 1911 Brittanica? Richerman (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Er, quite. The low risk of the investment is hardly sufficient to offset the minimal rental income and the tenant's security of tenure (or, more likely, right to enfranchisement of the freehold). DWaterson (talk) 22:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Is a grount rent really a rentcharge?
A ground rent is a low rent paid on a long lease. A rentcharge is a charge on land (including freehold land) which entitles its beneficiary to receive a rent. This includes estate rentcharges for maintenance of common facilities for freehold homes. Surely they are not the same thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.173.142.114 (talk) 17:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Well according to the Government office for the Northwest "A rentcharge (sometimes known as 'Chief Rent' in the North West or 'Ground Rent' in other parts of the country) is an annual sum charged on, or issuing out of, freehold land. Please note the term 'groundrent' is also used to refer to either a rentcharge or a rent payable on leasehold land.  This is confusing as a true groundrent is a sum payable in relation to land held under a lease.  As a result, it is important to know the status of the land for which, the annual sum is paid." see: http://www.gos.gov.uk/gonw/PeopleSustainableCommunities/Housing/Rentcharges/


 * Also, they may be low rents today but when they were created they weren't, many landowners made a lot of money from them but with inflation they've lost all their value. Richerman (talk) 19:28, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Utterly confused
I'm afraid this article has hopelessly confused "rent service" - rent payable arising out of an interest in the land, such as a tenant's payment to a landlord, normally known as "rent" and "rentcharge" - sums payable out of land where the payee need have no interest in the land. The Rentcharges Act does not apply to the former but does to the latter.

"Ground rent" is also not a precise legal category. The 1967 and 1993 acts apply to (or applied to) *long* leases - ie. the length of the lease is what mattered - and to some extent at low rents, but ground rent (or not) is irrelevant. As far as the common law and statute is concerned, there is just rent (i.e. rent service) which may be low or high.

Valuation of the freehold interest (for the purposes of either the 1967 or 1993 acts) is very complicated. It is probably not sensible to have an unexplained section about it here, since it does not explain what a ground rent is or might be.

It is relatively unusual nowadays to use the term "ground rents" to refer to the estates (usually freeholds, but not always) to which they are payable. It is not a form of wording used in any statute or in most modern decisions. That, again, makes the article unclear.

Quia Emptores is about feudal tenure and has nothing to do with leases at all. Confusing, because the term "tenant" is twice used, but the history section is a red herring too.

I can't speak to the parts of the article which aren't English law, but I am at a loss to know what to do to tidy it up except to delete most of it (which is covered elsewhere anyway). Thoughts? Francis Davey (talk) 23:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I raise these points before going in and doing a big edit because I am used to having my edits undone. I am an expert in the field and the references in the body don't back up what is claimed (in fact they often contradict it) but saying something in the talk page first may avoid having to get stuck into a foolish argument. Francis Davey (talk) 23:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)