When people say they own a home, they may mean one of two things. They may own the freehold - that is, own the property outright. Alternatively, they may own a long lease. Often the two types of ownership are treated as equivalent. However, in legal terms the owner of a long lease is regarded as tenant of whoever owns the freehold (the landlord). The tenant will be obliged to pay yearly ground rent and, usually, also a service charge for the cost of maintaining the building. This consultation paper deals with a more unusual obligation, which occurs in some long leases. This is where the tenant is required to pay a substantial fee when a defined event happens. Typically, the event is the sale of the property, and the fee payable is a percentage of the sale price. They are referred to by a bewildering variety of names, including ‘transfer fees’; ‘contingency fees’; ‘deferred management fees’ and ‘selling service fees’. The Law Commission calls these fees by the generic term, ‘event fees’. In 2013, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) investigated the use of one sort of event fee (known as a ‘transfer fee’) in leases of specialist housing for older people. They found that terms imposing this type of event fee in leases were potentially unfair contract terms, contrary to what is now the Consumer Rights Act 2015. This consultation paper addresses the problems uncovered by the OFT’s investigation but also covers all types of event fee