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999-Year Lease
- tiernano 7y agothe Guinness Factory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_Brewery 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 7y 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 The 1759 lease is no longer valid as the company purchased the lands outright many years ago.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 https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/faq
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoLegitimate question: why not just add 1 and make them thousand year leases? Easier to remember, easier to say, and practically equivalent.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoReminds 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 7y agoHuh. Even common law is zero-indexed.
- gowld 7y agoAre 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.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoIts a terms thing, in a one year lease, let's say you sign it in December, and pay for the month of January. Now each month you make a payment for the "next" month, so in November (month 11) you make the final payment for December. You have made 12 payments but the last one was in month 11. The first payment was made in month "0" :-) it happens "outside" the lease range. In a 99 year lease (the more common ones) you make your first year payment and then the lease starts. Then you make 99 more payments and at the end of the last year the least ends. Which will be the 100 year anniversary of the start of the lease.
- cwmma 7y agoyeah but in your example, nobody would call a 1 year lease an 11 month lease, because you have the thing for 12 months not 11
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI don't name these things :-)
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoWell, why do we generally call two year leases two year leases, but thousand year leases 999-Year leases? Where is the cutoff point where we switch terminology?
- gowld 7y ago999 is the largest three digit number. If 1000 was feasible, then so would 9999, so they'd use that.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoWhy would they be limited to three digits?
- lonelappde 7y agoGotta stop somewhere, right?
- geoffyoungs 7y agoThere was a time when lawyers charged by the word for contracts.
- sleavey 7y agoThis 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 7y agoIIRC it's a significant source of income for the British Royal Family. They own a lot of land.
- ValentineC 7y agoUK 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/ https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/resources/faqs/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Grant_Act_2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Grant_Act_2011 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list#United_Kingdom
- jermaustin1 7y agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99-year_lease
- chewyfruitloop 7y agoMy 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 7y agoSo ... can you sell the house?
- Fezzik 7y agoGenerally, 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.
- secfirstmd 7y agoGuinness/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.
- tiernano 7y agoIt's 9000!
- msingle 7y agoit 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.
- secfirstmd 7y agoYeh I remember that. I would stop drinking Guinness forever if they tried that crap. And I'm sure most of Ireland would.
- marcthe12 7y agoA 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.