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Questions, answered

Year 99: what actually happens, and what it is worth today.

Every sponsor asks it, usually in the first meeting: "so you get my building in 99 years?" Yes — and here is the honest math on what that is worth, why lenders do not care, and why it is the reason the capital is cheap.

The reversion is real. Its present value is almost nothing. Both things are true.
<0.1%
Present value of $1 received in 99 years at any commercial discount rate
·
2–3
Building generations a 99-year term typically outlives
·
99 yrs
Of full control, financing, sale, and upside in the meantime
Discount anything — a building, a dollar, a city block — back 99 years at an 8–10% required return and its present value rounds to a fraction of one percent. That is why the reversion barely moves an appraisal, why leasehold lenders underwrite the lease like ownership, and why sponsors trade a year-99 event their grandchildren's successors will manage for millions of cheap capital today.
What the lease actually says

The mechanics, plainly.

At expiration, improvements revert to the landowner — in our form, without payment, which is the market standard that keeps the rent low. Everything before that moment belongs to the leasehold: operate, refinance, sell the leasehold, renovate, rebuild. A well-drafted lease also deals with the last decades sensibly — maintenance standards so nobody milks a dying asset, and the practical reality that most 99-year leases are renegotiated, extended, or recapitalized long before year 50, because both sides usually make more money restarting the clock than running it out.

Questions, answered

FAQ.

Does the reversion hurt my building's value or my ability to sell?

For most of the term, no. A leasehold with 70+ years remaining trades and finances like ownership. Value pressure appears only in the final decades, which is when extensions get negotiated.

Can I extend before the end?

Almost always, commercially: a fresh term is usually worth more to both sides than a countdown. Extensions are negotiated, not automatic, and that is true across the industry.

Why not just do a 199-year lease so nobody thinks about it?

Some deals do. Term length is a pricing conversation: the longer the term, the closer our position is to selling the land outright, and the rent reflects it.

Get your number

Doing the reversion math on your deal?

Send the property and we will show you what the land is worth as 99 years of contracted rent, with the reversion priced honestly at what it is: almost nothing.

Email us the property