Reading the Regency

Property - An Introduction

"And I have two or three ideas also," said Edmund, "and one of them is, that very little of your plan for Thornton Lacey will ever be put in practice. I must be satisfied with rather less ornament and beauty. I think the house and premises may be made comfortable, and given the air of a gentleman's residence, without any very heavy expense, and that must suffice me."
[Chapter 25, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen]

Buying a House

"...whenever Winthrop comes into his hands, he will make a different sort of place of it, and live in a very different sort of way; and with that property, he will never be a contemptible man--good, freehold property."
[Chapter 9, Persuasion, by Jane Austen]

If you needed a house to live in you had a few options, depending on how much money you had. If you preferred to buy a house outright, rather than renting, then there were various types of "ownership" available:

Freehold - With a freehold property you bought the house and the land. The cost of a freehold house included the value of the house, outbuildings and the land it stood on. Being a Freeholder—someone owning a property worth forty shillings or more—would entitle you to vote in Parliamentary elections. Most gentlemen's country houses and land for farming would also be freehold.

Leasehold - With leasehold, a builder rented (leased) a parcel of land from the original owner and built a house on it. When you bought that house, you owned the building, but you didn't own the land it stood on. You only bought the right to live there during the period of the lease. The land still belonged to the original owner, and as a leaseholder you had to pay ground rent on that land. A lease ran for a specified time—sometimes fifty, eighty, ninety-nine or two hundred years—and if the lease expired while you owned the house you would have to pay to renew the lease. That could cost anywhere from tens to thousands of pounds. This is why, when leasehold houses were sold, the remaining term of the lease and the cost of the annual ground rent were often mentioned in the sale notice:

"A desirable FAMILY HOUSE, No. 60, on the west side of Welbeck-street, Cavendish Square. The house contains five bed chambers, two drawing rooms, dining room, library, excellent offices and cellaring, coach house and stabling for four horses. Held on lease for 11½ years; rent only 110l per annum."
[Morning Chronicle, pub. 1st January 1810]

A large proportion of the townhouses in Mayfair, surrounding Grosvenor Square, were leasehold properties, built on land owned by the Duke of Westminster. He had to offer leases as the land was entailed.

Leasehold houses were more common in towns and cities than in the countryside.

If you saw a house advertised for sale, negotiated the price and agreed to buy it, it would be sold by Private Contract. The house might be sold directly by the owner or through an estate agent. The person selling the house would pay a fee to the estate agent when the house was sold.

Both freehold and leasehold houses were frequently sold at Auction, and the highest bidder on the day of the auction would be the purchaser; assuming it reached its "reserve price", or the minimum price the seller had set. The purchaser would also pay a commission to the auction house.

In many cases, a house would be advertised a few weeks in advance of the auction, with a note that it could be purchased by private contract any time up to the day of the auction.

Building a new house

"If I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me, and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage."
[Chapter 36, Sense & Sensibility, by Jane Austen]