So I know in the past very few people actually owned land in the UK and everyone else would have some sort of tenancy or condition where they had rights to the land but the actual ownership was in the hands of a member of the aristocracy. Is this the case today or is it possible to buy small parcels of land without anyone else holding a superior title to the land?
Buying freehold property is pretty much standard. Leasehold houses are the exception rather than the norm (and should you buy one, there is often the option to purchase the freehold). Flats tend to be leasehold, or you own a joint freehold to the land with the other residents.
There are pockets of land still held by large landowners and corporations (The Duke of Westminster being a classic example - he owns half of London). But for the average person, buying freehold is normal and obviously preferred. I’ve owned four houses and one apartment in my life - only the apartment was leasehold (the freeholder being the Church of England - it was a flat in a converted church).
Buying land is, I’ve always thought, always freehold. No doubt someone will come by shortly to tell me I’m wrong.
I’ve read the Wikipedia page on this, and I’m cross-eyed with it. I’ve heard of property being sold with various sorts of restrictive covenants, and there are occasional cases where people are disgruntled to find that their idyllic country retirement cottage carries with in an obligation to contribute to repairs to the local church, but never of a freehold purchase that requires payment to some distant landowner. Leaseholds (for a defined term) plus ground rent, yes (and there’s a current hooha over new-build developers selling leaseholds and increasing ground rents to extortionate levels).
PS: I wouldn’t know for sure, but different laws may apply in Scotland.
You are not wrong. You are also not right. As with English land law (lets ignore Scotland and N Ireland for the time being), nobody really knows.
You do need to differentiate between the numbers of owners who have a freehold or leasehold and the percentage of l**and. The vast majority of land in England was and is leasehold.
Now my statistics are from my old Land law classes back on 03-04, but from memory about half of all new builds are leasholds, and as far as new housing developments are concerned, IIRC it is a majority.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that ultimately all land is owned by the Crown.
Nobody really knows. English land law and land registration was and is a mess. Land Registration Act 2002 was supposed to eventually make the land records reflect the actual situation for a particular piece of land. It ran headfirst into the financial crises and its foreclosures, and now from what I hear from my friends who went to land law, its more muddled then ever.
Currently, even freehold does not give you absolute rights to the land. Per Ss 11 of the Act, i.e Absolute Title, Possessory freehold title and *Qualified freehold title *. For the second and third, not only do you not have absolute rights
Complicating matters, some types of freehold give you more rights (essentially unlimited) then leasehold. An Absolute leasehold title is probably the most secure type of title under, while Qualified Freehold is the least secure.
And now I am having flashbacks to the trauma that was Land Law class.
Amazingly, I got my highest marks in Land in the year I sat it.
Part of that cunning plan was in order to bugger up relations with peasants ranging from Ireland to India.
Mind you, I have absolutely no idea whether French Law, traditional or Napoleonic; or say, Dutch law ( Romano-Germanic law ) is in any way superior in this — or other — aspects.
As for it all remaining to the Crown as ultimate possessor, which is vital for security, it is not really much different in the USA, which grants lands ( including those it did not actually own at the time ) and takes them away through non-payment of taxes and ‘eminent domain’.
In Aus, it symplified land ownership, because you don’t have to go very far back to find it was “all owned by the Crown”, which then gave freehold or crown lease or whatever.
And from the USA, the old surveying joke:
:“Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. The title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. She got title from the Pope. The Pope, represents Jesus Christ, and he got it from his Dad.”
Because farmland is typically held under a lease.
Does the Duke of Westminster have to pay property tax on his London holdings and which government entity would he pay? Is he free to sell his land?
The principal property tax in the UK is council tax, paid to the local government. For rented property, it’s the tenant/occupier who is liable rather than the landlord.
Of course, the rental income of the Westminster estate would attract corporation tax/income tax (depending on whether the estate is organised in a corporate structure or a trust, as to which I have no clue).
As to freedom to sell, there’s no public law that would prevent it. But the land could conceivably be held in family trust structures and the like designed to make disposal difficult, or at any rate to make disposal on the whim of the present Duke alone difficult.
The thing that makes Australian property law vastly superior to the UK, (IMO anyway) is the concept of strata titling for multiple unit buildings.
To answer the OP in part, like many things in England you need to disintinguish between London and the rest of the country. Some stats I’ve seen indicate the following:
London:~50% of residential housing is Leasehold
Nationwide (England & Wales): ~22% is Leasehold
Noting that this only refers to Residential housing.
So, yes it is entirely possible to purchase Freehold land in England, however as other posters have pointed out, Freehold may not be free of sometimes bizarre requirements or covenants, although that is far from an exclusively English phenomenon.