Why are leases made for 99-year terms?
Dear Cecil: Why is it that leases frequently are made for 99 years instead of 100, or some other more manageable figure? The idea, obviously, is that the person who takes the lease will be dead by the time it comes up for renewal, but how was this particular number arrived at? It all seems very strange to me. — Leonard Scheuer, Chicago Dear Leonard: The 99-year lease is apparently a by-product of an old English custom, dating back at least to feudal times. In the Middle Ages, extended leases were made for a period of 1,000 years, but as the Renaissance approached, the figure was reduced to 999 for reasons that today aren’t entirely clear. In Henry IV, Part II, Shakespeare bends a metaphor around the thousand-year lease–“Now I am so hungry, that if I might have a lease of my life for a thousand years, I could stay no longer”–so the practice must have survived into the 17th century. But a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, Sir Edward Coke, is already speculating on the origin of the 999-ye
