TW removes ground rent doubling leasehold terms

Taylor Wimpey is to remove terms from leasehold contracts that cause ground rents to double in price, closing an investigation into the practice by the Competition and Markets Authority. The leaseholds will now revert to a fixed ground rent.

The firm will also remove terms which had originally been ground rent doubling clauses but were converted so that the ground rent increased in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) - these will also revert to a fixed ground rent. These leaseholds had already been reviewed under TW’s Ground Rent Review Assistance Scheme (GRRAS) launched voluntarily by the firm in 2017.

The housebuilder says it is also making a financial offer, as agreed with the CMA, to third party freeholders of leases that it no longer owns, to enable their leaseholders to get the same terms.

TW chief executive Pete Redfern said: "Taylor Wimpey has always sought to do the right thing by its customers, shareholders and other stakeholders, and we are pleased that today's voluntary undertakings will draw this issue to a full close, within our original financial provision."

The CMA launched enforcement action against four housebuilders in September 2020 - Countryside and Taylor Wimpey, for using possibly unfair contract …