Lease oddities

• Can I grant a lease to myself?
• Concurrent leases and leases for trees.

Lease of air?

Section 205(1)(ix) of the Law of Property Act 1925 expressly provides that land is capable of both horizontal and vertical division allowing, therefore, for a separation of estates between different strata both above and below the surface layer of the ground. What remains controversial, however, is whether the definition of ‘land’ may include a volume of air space existing as an entirely independent unit of property separate and distinct from any adjacent soil or ground.

There is certainly Commonwealth and US authority which recognises that air space itself is capable of both freehold and leasehold ownership. In Macht v Department of Assessments of Baltimore City (1972) 296 A 2d 162, the Court of Appeals of Maryland accepted that a lease of a volume of air above an altitude of 124 feet over the landlord’s premises (in order to secure access to light and air to