Persimmon And Aviva To Refund Leaseholders After Inquiry

Persimmon And Aviva To Refund Leaseholders After Inquiry

Thousands of leaseholders are to be refunded unfair ground rents and permitted to buy the freehold of their property at a discounted price after a crackdown by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

BBC News reports that Persimmon Homes and Aviva have agreed to offer the refunds after the  CMA uncovered ‘troubling evidence’ that leasehold homeowners and prospective buyers were overcharged and misled.

Campaigners have described the commitment by the UK’s biggest housebuilders as ‘life-changing’ and a massive milestone in the battle to secure a fair deal for property buyers, and urge other developers and freeholders to follow suit.

Insurance group Aviva, which bought freeholds from developers, has agreed to remove ground rent terms that have been ruled unfair and to repay homeowners whose rents had doubled.

Persimmon has agreed to offer leasehold homeowners the opportunity to buy the freehold of their property at a discounted price and will make repayments to some homeowners who have bought their freeholds.

The company has also stated it will extend its right-to-buy scheme to cap the purchase price of a freehold at £2,000 for any house leases sold between 1 January 2000 and the end of 2026.

Dean Finch, Persimmon’s chief executive, added that buyers who already bought their freeholds from Persimmon under the existing scheme, and who still owned the freehold, could apply to be reimbursed for the difference between the price paid and £2,000.

The CMA identified a range of abuses including homeowners having to pay increasing ground rents, which in some cases were planned to double every 10 years, leaving many people struggling to sell their homes.

Some prospective leasehold homebuyers had been misleadingly told it would be cheap to convert a leasehold to freehold, only to find that the cost had increased by thousands of pounds, with little or no warning.

The inquiry has focused on the UK’s largest housebuilders, and investigations into Barratt, Taylor Wimpey and Countryside are ongoing.

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