I’m sure you must have heard of the term freehold in your discussion with a real estate agency or agent.
Freehold stands for the ownership of real property, both land and all immovable structures attached to such land for an undefined length of time. It means owning the building and the land it stands on outright and in perpetuity.
It is your name that is in the land registry as the “Freehold” owning the “Title Absolute”. A Freehold Estate is transferable to the owner’s “heirs and assigns”, also known in some parlance as ‘OMONILES’ (successors by inheritance or purchase including gift, respectively), in which case it was a “fee simple” estate.
Freehold is always the preferable option as the properties and whatever structure revert back to the owner or his heirs at any time they need it.
For an estate to be a freehold it must possess two qualities:
- Immobility: Property must be land or some interest issuing out of or annexed to land
- Ownership of it must be of an indeterminate duration: If the time of ownership can be fixed and determined, then it cannot be a freehold.
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This is opposed to a leasehold in which the property reverts to the owner of the land after the lease period has expired.
In freehold
• You won’t have to pay annual ground rent
• You don’t have a freeholder either failing to maintain the building or charging huge amounts for it
• You have responsibility for maintaining the fabric of the building – the roof and the outside walls
• Whole houses are normally sold freehold
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