99-year lease

A 99-year lease, under historic English law, since widely received abroad, was traditionally seen as the longest practical term of a lease of real property without it being considered perpetual. While it is no longer a hard legal limit in most common law jurisdictions today, 99-year leases continue to be common as a matter of business practice. In some countries (such as Singapore) land reform legislation has resulted in most or all land being owned by the state and leased to users, which often takes the form of a 99-year lease. In this case, the lease is often transferable and treated as essentially equivalent to ownership, at least to the extent that it is the main way in which one may purchase the more or less permanent use of land.

Property scholars describe leasing as a "widespread and highly successful" institutional form that allocates control and risk differently from ownership. Governments have also used 99-year leases for strategic purposes, including the 1940 U.S.–U.K. Destroyers for Bases agreements granting rent free 99-year base rights.