I was asked recently by a solicitor contact to give an indication of the likely premium to buy out an onerous ground rent review on a flat he was buying for a client.
As much as the tenure was virtual freehold being a lease granted in June 2014 for 999 years, the current passing ground rent of £1500 pa was subject to doubling reviews every 20 years.
This may not feel very much in percentage terms now equivalent to approx. 0.27% of the asking price of £5.6m. However when you calculate that there will be 49 further reviews until lease expiry in 2998; the final rent payable for the final 20 years from 2978 will amount to £844,424,930,131,968,000 pa!
It needs 30 words to state this amount as follows:
Eight hundred and forty four quadrillion, four hundred and twenty four trillion, nine hundred and thirty billion, one hundred and thirty one million, nine hundred and sixty eight thousand pounds
..which is quite mouthful to say the least.
Another way to describe this amount is over 10^15 (ten to the power of 15) equivalent to the number of ants in the world but less than the number of grains of sand in the world at 10^16 (quintillion).
It also needed 467 lines of excel to calculate the cost to buy out the rent review alone.
I think we can see now why the government passed the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 limiting most new leases to one peppercorn pa!