Ground Rent - Letter Received - Chancers ?

Dutchy

Hello all,

My mother, who is in her 70's and lives alone in Kildare, received a letter from Kenny Estates chasing money for supposed ground rent due. The amount is nominal but it's the principle that counts.

She was curious as to why she received this letter (she paid off her mortgage many years ago) so decided to call Kenny Estates as she assumed this was an error or similar.

She was left upset after the call - Kenny Estates said she had to pay it immediately. From here, she decided to bring me into the conversation. Again, the amount is small but its now become a bit personal and I question this companies ethics.

Please see attached letter from Kenny estates and page from land registry that confirms my parents (mother and late father ) are absolute and full-owners (I have redacted to remain anonymous)

Before I call Kenny estates - am I correct when I say my mother owns the land / should ignore or legally are they correct ?

Dutchy

jaffa20

You're not the only one. Very strange.

Trigger Happy

I have been getting these letters for about a decade now. But always addressed to 'the owner' rather than my name.

They go in the bin. Always.

wench

The page you've included doesn't tell you if there is a ground rent due.

Below you can see an extract from my parent's folio, which is leasehold, vs mine which is freehold. Both say full owner.

Does yours have lease details like these in the first section? If not, then I'd be inclined to agree that it is a scam.

Register of Ownership of Leasehold Interest

Part 1(A) - The Property

DETAILS OF LEASE

----------------

LEASE DATE :

LESSOR :

LEESEE :

TERM (YEARS) : 250

START DATE :

RENT : £18.00

BURDEN FOLIO :

Part 2 - Ownership

Title ABSOLUTE

XXX is full owner.

Register of Ownership of Freehold Land

Part 1(A) - The Property

<no lease details here>

Part 2 - Ownership

Title ABSOLUTE

YYY is full owner.

ParkRunner

Check on landdirect.ie if ownership is freehold or not

Jim_Hodge

If it's not freehold then a ground rent is usually due. It's normally a tiny annual amount. Did the notice say what period the charge covered?

Decades ago my late parents bought the leasehold after many years paying small amount of ground rent along with most neighbours in the south Dublin suburb. The original builder, Bailey, of many houses in the area had owned the land on which they built and sold the houses, and for decades the Bailey family charged the small fee, but the descendants were eventually keen to sell off the leaseholds.

mct1

As Parkrunner says, you can check if your mother is freehold or leasehold on the land registry website https://www.landdirect.ie by just putting the Eircode in. Oh and Google Kenny Estates - lots of similar queries and complaints going back a few years - including on Boards, Reddit and Liveline.

Dutchy

Ok this is all very interesting. Thank you. So it appears it's a leasehold Vs freehold. There is no detail re rent here but refers to what's "specified on the lease"?

All very strange but it's starting to appear that this is legit ?

mct1

Legit? I'm not so sure about that. Have a read about the Joe Duffy prog https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/rte-liveline-listeners-stunned-hear-21290312

The scam word comes up a lot with this crowd.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119785105#Comment_119785105

She can find out via either land direct or the land registry (sometimes land direct doesn't have everything) who owns the land and deal with them direct. Its better to have the freehold all tied up done and dusted for probate situations or future sales. Do it ahead of time . It makes it cleaner later on in life just when people don't want to be dealing with this sort of hastle.

I'd assume there are various crowds going around spoofing trying to act as middle men where leaseholds exist and blanket areas with letters though.

Marcusm

Kenny Estates administration and management are very poor. I bought a leasehold title in Dublin and acquired the freehold at the same time. Five years thereafter they send me demands for payment of €0.00 ground rent but still offer to arrange the purchase of the freehold for me! Not so much chancers as incapable of communicating with any level of professionalism. The letters continued to come for a few years after I informed them of their stupidity.

ittakestwo

So it appears this Kenny estates buys freeholds of land with leasehold interests onit and trys to get leaseholders to pay the gound rent or even better buy out the freehold on which their properties are in. Nothing illegal but may come to a shock for some people who never was charged ground rent by their previous landlord.

Most of the older parts of dublin still has alot of leasehold properties.

NUTLEY BOY

We bought out the ground rent and acquired the "fee simple" recently. This changed the title from leasehold to freehold and ended payment of ground rent.

We then received a formal document called a "vesting certificate". This is an important document. It verifies the valid acquisition of the fee simple interest [ground rent]. We also got our solicitor to have it memorialised at the Registry of Deeds.

Despite being a notice party to the purchase procedure the ground landlord sent us a ground rent demand! When reminded of the position they stopped. It was just an administrative oversight.

There are different ways to purchase the fee simple interest. We used the arbitration scheme. That gave us a title defensible against the world by effectively extinguishing all leasehold interests.

If OP's mother / parents bought out the ground rent did they use the arbitration scheme or the consent scheme? If the latter, I would always be worried about the soundness of the title as there could be other interests on the lease who have not consented to their interests being extinguished. Put another way, you may believe that you have bought out the ground rent but, in fact, you might not have done so.

The principal question to be resolved is the nature of OP's mother's interest i.e. leasehold or freehold as far as the party demanding payment is concerned.

And finally, I regard it as poor practice to ignore legal letters where you have uncertainty about the factual and legal position on a matter like this.

surrender monkey

Hi op, if you look up the folio that is noted in Part 1 a where it says this lease is registered as a burden on folio x. Is there a letter F at the end of that folio or no letter at all?. If you pay 5 euro and look up that folio that should be the freehold. I would expect The owner of that freehold folio would be Kenny Estates. Your parents can buy out the ground rent through arbitration in the land registry there is a section in there who deals with it and they are very helpful.