Freeholders living off ‘rentier structure’ with ‘exorbitant’ ground rent, MPs say

‘Freeholders have over the past 15 years created a rentier structure where they can extract revenues from the ground rent that are exorbitant,’ said the Labour MP Barry Gardiner. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

MPs have laid into freeholders for creating a “rentier structure” in England and Wales in recent years, charging “exorbitant” ground rents of £8,000 a year in some cases, as a freeholder group pushed back against proposed changes to leasehold laws.

The government’s long-awaited leasehold reform bill, which would make it easier and cheaper for leaseholders to extend their lease and buy the freehold, and will ban leaseholds on newly built houses – but not flats – in England and Wales, is at the committee scrutiny stage.