UKH

We're currently remortgaging and apparently there's a rentchage on our property.

Neither the estate agents, solicitors or previous mortgage companies (going back 8 years), mentioned this. None of our paperwork mentions it but the new mortgage company says there's a rentcharge on our property.

Does anyone know how to find out who the owner of it is and why it was never mentioned or detected until now?

Cheers

Michael

Have to confess I'd never even heard of the term until now. Might be some advice here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rentcharges#how-to-redeem-your-rentcharge
 

Sounds very much like your solicitor messed up, (no surprise there, mine screwed up a leasehold flat I bought years ago and I didn't find out until a couple of years late), on the original purchase.

Edit: If your new mortgage company has discovered the rentcharge, they must have access to the name of the land owner.

Sounds like one of those situations where the vast majority of the time it doesn't cause any problems. However if the rentcharge owner is sufficiently arseholeish then they can cause significant problems as in the 2016 case....

I think rentcharge is one of those annoying things where there is no proper centralised record of it so it's basically impossible to find out who the owner is if you don't know.  

Have you asked your mortgage company how they found out, and if they have any details? How old is your house, if there are lots of a similar generation to yours could you potentially ask around the neighbours, especially old ones who have lived there for a long time?

Never had to deal with one myself fortunately. 

Are you sure it’s not on your title register?  I would guess it probably is on your title, likely just wasn’t cared about much when you bought if that was 8 years ago and it’s an old rent rentcharge.  Estate agents and mortgage company wouldn’t likely know it was there.  You should have been informed about it though, by your lawyer.

https://www.penningtonslaw.com/news-publications/latest-news/2017/roberts-v...

This changed things so now they are a problem.  What have they asked you to do?

If they exist they should be on the deeds and the Land Registry entry.  I believe they're all going to expire at some point (edit: in 2037) but not yet.  In the meantime you can buy them off for a fixed formula (very cheap) plus solicitor's fees.

They're sort of like leasehold ground rent but not.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rentcharges

I have a rentcharge on my house, think it's £3 a year. If you've not being paying it you will be in arrears which could cause you problems as per the link from thomasdixon. Pretty surprising this is the first you are hearing about it!

They are only really a thing in Bristol and Manchester I think, and legislation was passed so they all expire in 203X. I get a letter every year or two from the owner of my rentcharge asking if I want to buy it out but I've not bothered yet

They also exist in the Liverpool area and West Lancashire.

Title information won’t necessarily give you owner details, likely out of date.  You own the land, they just own a rentcharge which doesn’t have to be registered so there’s no way to see who owns it now - unless it’s one of the big companies that are buying up these things, they register them sometimes.  Old practice was to ask the seller for 6 years back rent to pay it if the owner appeared (often less than £20 total).

They expire in 2037 so a ways off still.

I had this on a freehold victorian house in Chorley. I didn't pay it for years 'cos I was a bit confused and/or wondered if it was a scam of some kind and so never really did anything about  it.  Eventually, they got a bit more heavy about it (although the sums involved weren't great at all) so I payed up the amount that would make them go away forever (redeemed it). The solicitor never told me about it when I bought the house.  The older I get, the less trust I have in conveyancers.

Supposedly they came about when, during massive expansions of housing in the Victorian era, developers approached landowners but didn't have the capital to buy the land so got them to agree to receive payment over many years, or somesuch.

We'd never heard of this until we moved to Manchester, think ours is £6/year. The buyout price seems to be more than (2037-20xx)*6 so we've declined buying it out.

Manager at work told me that his parents house, he used to annually take cash round to the descendant of the original land owner who had the rent charge.

Ok apparently it was originally owed to the Earl of Liverpool (from 1890) for the upkeep of a local school. Wired as my house is built on an old RAF base in Lincoln! It looks like it was passed to someone else but I've got no way of knowing who.

So I 've no idea who owns it now or how to go about actually paying it. Any tips on contacting the owner of the charge?

This came up on a few houses that I looked and I'd never heard of it before. It's very common in and around Manchester, where it's sometimes referred to as Chief Rent. 

According to the solicitors,  it was brought about during the industrial revolution, when the property building market was booming and developers didn't have the case to buy all the land required. As a confab, it was written into the deeds that for the rest of time, a rentcharge would be paid by the property owner to the former landowner (or who ever has bought out the right to collect the rentcharge), though they failed to write in inflation clauses, hence the tiny amounts pauyable (<£1 in some cases). 

A conveyancing solicior should be able to help find who the rentcharge is payable to. If they can't, it's worth taking out indemnity insurance (should be <£50) to cover you in the event that the rentcharge creditor comes out of the woodwork in future and tries to take you to court for loss or earnings. 

You also have the right to permanently buy out or "redeem" the rentcharge, making the issue go away permanently. 

We've got one on our house. No one had any idea who it was owed to, and the previous owners hadn't paid it for the past 40 years. The legal advice we received was to take out insurance (paid for by the vendor) and don't try to contact the person we owe it to - that can invalidate the indemnity policy.

If they haven’t contacted you and it’s not registered - basically no chance.  Ask neighbours (who will likely have the same rentcharge) maybe but if they’re not collecting from you then likely not collecting from anyone else either.  If you were able to contact them that can make things worse anyway (no indemnity possible, and some lenders will then refuse to lend without it being bought out so you’ve got another process to deal with, plus added costs, before you can remortgage).  Pay for the policy and save yourself the effort.

You could try going back to the solicitor you used to buy, but if it was prior to that case I don’t rate your chances of getting anywhere...

Roberts v Lawton didn't change anything; the decision is a useful warning that forgetting or omitting to pay a rentcharge can lead to horrendous expense/loss of home. IMHO they should always be redeemed.