999-Year Lease

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999-year_lease

by jermaustin1 • 7 years ago

39 28 7 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Legitimate question: why not just add 1 and make them thousand year leases? Easier to remember, easier to say, and practically equivalent.

ChuckMcM3• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the 'off by one' joke in CS. It actually is a 1000 year lease. The first year of the lease is year 0. So you make 999 lease payments and you have paid for all years up to and including year 999. The lease gets renewed at year 1000.

lordleft• 7 years ago

Huh. Even common law is zero-indexed.

gowld2• 7 years ago

Are you saying 999 lease payments plus a down payment, or making an off-by-one error?

When I sign a 1-year lease on real estate, it's 1 year, not 2 years.

gowld2• 7 years ago

999 is the largest three digit number. If 1000 was feasible, then so would 9999, so they'd use that.

Wowfunhappy3• 7 years ago

Why would they be limited to three digits?

geoffyoungs• 7 years ago

There was a time when lawyers charged by the word for contracts.

sleavey• 7 years ago

This isn't just a historical phenomenon, given that the Millennium Dome (opened in 2000) was also granted one. I wonder what the point of it is - are local governments in the UK not allowed to gift or sell land, only lease it?

jameskilton• 7 years ago

IIRC it's a significant source of income for the British Royal Family. They own a lot of land.

ValentineC• 7 years ago

UK land is technically "owned" by the Crown Estate [1], and revenue goes to the British government. The royal family get a percentage of this (called the Sovereign Grant [2]; née Civil List [3]).

[1] https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/resources/faqs/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Grant_Act_2011

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list#United_Kingdom

tiernano2• 7 years ago

the Guinness Factory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_Brewery) has a 9000 year lease... they pay IRL£45 per year for the lease... Not sure what that works out in Euro with inflation...

ollie87• 7 years ago

"The 9,000 year lease signed in 1759 was for a four-acre brewery site. Today, the brewery has expanded to cover over 50 acres. The 1759 lease is no longer valid as the company purchased the lands outright many years ago. So don't worry, we're not planning on going anywhere."

https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/faq

jermaustin1• 7 years ago

This isn't just a UK thing. Well the 999-year lease is a UK/Commonwealth thing, but I've worked in NYC real estate, and a lot of projects have multiple hundred year leases.

And interestingly enough, there is a 99-year lease which the 99-year term was not literal, but merely an arbitrary time span beyond the life expectancy of any possible lessee (user) or lessor (owner). [1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99-year_lease

arrivance• 7 years ago

I believe I read somewhere (and it is one of the related articles on the page) that it was the 99-year lease that actually caused Hong Kong to lapse back to Chinese control.

Aeolun• 7 years ago

A great reminder to always go with 999 years if you do anything country scale.

chewyfruitloop• 7 years ago

My house is on land that’s on a 999 year lease since 1870(ish) from the county that moved boundaries 40 years ago...and we have no idea who the the lease holder is... so that’s fairly perpetual

ralfd• 7 years ago

So ... can you sell the house?

Fezzik• 7 years ago

Generally, yes. You can sell the building on the land (which you own) and transfer the lease (sometimes for a fee, sometimes not). My family has a cabin North of Seattle, WA (USA) that is on land that a non-profit cultural association just renewed a 99 year lease on from a railroad (I forget which one). So long as you abide by the org rules sales are easy. I do not know how universal such set-ups are.

secfirstmd2• 7 years ago

Guinness/Diageo in Dublin have one of these. A whole chunk of the city around Dublin 8. I think they had an advert that they are 250 years of their way through it.

tiernano2• 7 years ago

It's 9000!

msingle• 7 years ago

it was, but it got converted to a normal purchase.

The funnier part is that they (Diageo, the owners of Guiness) discussed moving out of the original brewery and the people got so angry that Diageo realized they had to keep it open.

marcthe12• 7 years ago

A common thing in Singapore. Almost everything since the 60s has 99 or 999 year lease. HDBs in places like matter which are over 50 year old have low property processes even though it is a few stop to the down town.

999-Year Lease

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