Doesn’t leasehold inevitably lead to maintenance backlog at some point? As soon as it’s inherited by the next generation, you start wondering whether investment XY still makes sense based on the remaining years, right?
Why? It’s your house after all. You’ll do it just like with any other property. Fortunately, we don’t live in a time when leased land necessarily reverts back. It’s more often extended. And you get the corresponding value if you don’t want it anymore. For a well-maintained house, that’s more than for a ruin.
where the contract still runs for about ~25 years or less, that was more like a "hmm, no, I think rather not" for us
That would roughly be my question too: Could you imagine buying a house without massive discounts with 15 years left on the contract? 10 years? 5 years? 1 year?
I definitely wouldn’t do that. I can imagine that you could then sign a new contract. However, then with different conditions. But actually, the houses are used up by then anyway. Leasehold is based on the age of the houses.
"Railway buys up land"
Oh dear, we have that problem here too! Well, not us, but in our area. ........... There are levers you can use if construction costs are too high: buy a small starter property, rebuild later semi-detached house on a smaller plot build smaller, omit unnecessary rooms, smaller plot buy a used house and renovate yourself forego this and that fancy stuff two-family house with rental build later build on communal land build on leasehold All of these have their justification for one or the other. Just because something isn’t an option for you or suitable doesn’t automatically mean it’s worse than what you have. It’s different and each of these enumerations can have advantages for others.
