Commonhold versus leasehold

[matchmade]

Can anyone explain the new commonhold rules for buildings with shared ownership, and their advantages and disadvantgage? My understanding is that it's like leasehold, where the freehold is retained by someone else, but you have a share in the freehold and there's no-one else involved except the other commonholders. This seems easy to understand and equitable, so why would anyone in a residential setup ever use leasehold in the future when splitting properties into flats?

[DivaDebs]

Not sure if this answers your question, but, as a property developer who recently split a building in to 5 flats, we are selling the flats as a leasehold, which, once all 5 have been sold, will then be handed to all the owners in part share as freehold (when they will become the Management Company). This is purely to protect everyone's interest. For example, three of the flats are being lived in at the moment. If we gave freehold to those new owners immediately, they could paint the victorian building pink, and there would be nothing we (as the current management company) could do about it. Could make the remaining 2 difficult to sell.. Hope this helps.