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Latest news
Platinum Skies: £63,000 loss on £130,000 shared ownership retirement flat after new owner died 25 days after moving in
LKP wins reprieve for family as Platinum Skies makes £28,237 ‘gesture of goodwill’ Executive chairman Julian Shaffer references ‘truly exceptional’ case of pensioner’s death at the start of Covid lockdown in April 2020 and the market disruption that followed Exit and other fees are reduced ‘as a compassionate gesture of goodwill given the particular and […]
Shared ownership: Immensely complex; nothing shared when it comes to costs; clever ‘investors’ scent a revenue source to replace ground rents
By Sebastian O’Kelly This is a longer version of an article I wrote for the i Newspaper last week: Why shared ownership is the most problematic form of housing The shared ownership leases have come with the usual nasties designed to ramp up the value of the freehold interest, whether to the benefit of housing […]
Park home owners demo against 10% sales commissions
Park home owners marched on 10 Downing Street on September 18 to protest against the 10% resale commissions levied on their properties at resale by site owners. Chanting “We pay 10%. What do we want? Zero!” a delegation headed by Sonia McColl OBE, the veteran park home leader, accompanied by Sir Peter Bottomley, delivered a […]
Three quarters of Churchill Retirement flats have lost money when resold, says The Times
An analysis of Land Registry data has shown that three-quarters of the flats built by Churchill Retirement – owned by the McCarthy family who founded McCarthy and Stone – have resold at a loss, according to The Times. The average fall in value has been 18%, or £43,000, the newspaper said, with one flat in […]
Your chance to say what you think about retirement housing before September 18
The government has launched a call for evidence in the retirement housing community, with responses in by a deadline of 18 September. Please respond here: oph@levellingup.gov.uk And please copy your responses in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform, perhaps including your own MP: appg@leaseholdknowledge.com The task force, headed by Professor Julienne Meyer, […]
We need retirement ground rent gaming like a hole in the head, says ARCO
Gaming the new ground rents ban by introducing them at the last possible minute was damaging to the entire retirement housing sector and “we need this like a hole in the head”, said the Association of Retirement Community Operators at its annual conference yesterday. Michael Voges, ARCO chief executive, deplored bad practices in retirement housing […]
Investors see gold in retirement housing, but oldies have taken a look and remain wary … Brighter developers are pushing for change
Report of APPG on retirement housing 27 March 2023 We thought scandals in retirement housing would be the downfall of the leasehold system, but that was before doubling ground rents and the Grenfell disaster By Sebastian O’Kelly, trustee LKP and founder of BetterRetirementHousing.com When Martin Boyd (LKP chair) and I began this – he the […]
Retirement housing won’t grow until oldies are offered a product that they can trust, says head of ARCO
By Michael Voges, CEO of the Association of Retirement Community Operators The leasehold system in retirement housing is flawed and ensures that consumers taken on all the risk of future costs at a site, Michael Voges, the CEO of ARCO told the APPG on 27 March 2023. “ARCO commissioned a YouGov poll and found that […]
Why I took Woodlands Court to right to manage, why it works and why I want the authorities to intervene in this scandal hit sector
By Dan Healey, director of the Woodlands Court RTM, addressed the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform on 27 March 2023. He made a passionate plea for retirement sites to opt for right to manage and so employ managing agents accountable to the leaseholders who do the paying Right to Manage – […]
News archive
Taking over from Bob Bessell as head of Retirement Security retirement community provider: What we offer and why
Melanie Gowers is the newly appointed chief executive of Retirement Security Limited, a retirement housebuilder founded by Bob Bessell, a trustee of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership Bob Bessell, a former head of Warwickshire social services, became a retirement housebuilder and set up Retirement Security. He has undertaken to leave the freeholds to his sites in […]
Legal and General explains why it is investing in Inspired Villages, and wants reforms to the sector
Ben Rosewell, Legal and General, Head of Investment Later Living Business (Inspired Villages), addresses the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform on 27 March 2023 and explains why Legal and General is investing in this sector, and why it wants to see changes We entered into the senior housing space in 2017 […]
Bottomley to raise with Churchill Retirement its decision to continue charging ground rents
Sir Peter Bottomley is to raise with Churchill Retirement – a private company owned by the McCarthy family – its decision to continue to charge ground rents on sites that have not yet opened. New ground rents were banned under the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, which came into force at the end of […]
Park home demonstrators demand end to 10% sales fees – as litany of crooked practice reported to MPs
Around 80 park home owners converged on 10 Downing Street yesterday to deliver a blunt message demanding reform of their scandal-hit corner of the retirement housing market. The residents, mainly in their 70s, are furious at the skulduggerous behaviour of certain park home owners – and, truth be told, have little good to say about […]
Letter to Michael Gove: Housing association retirement living … is much improved if there is badgering by a determined resident
The following is a letter to Housing Secretary Michael Gove recording the experience of being a Leaseholder Resident in a Social Housing Complex. The housing association landlord is a member of the G15 group, which represents the larger ones. Dear Michael Gove, I note you are taking a keen interest in the performance of Social […]
French resi service group Emeria clears out FirstPort management in take-over
Will much change with the take-over from the usual service – service, that is, to the freeholders who employ FirstPort? And what – sacrebleau – is going on with the leaseholders at St David’s Square, on the Isle of Dogs, who are litigating in January? FirstPort, the biggest residential property manager in the UK, has […]
Retirement housebuilder Platinum Skies breached shared ownership rules with onerous ‘staircasing’ charges in the lease
And ground rents are £500pa on Bournemouth flats selling for £151,600 The Times today reports that retirement developer Platinum Skies, which has close links with prominent Tory politicians, inserted admin fees of tens of thousands of pounds in the supposedly affordable shared ownership leases. Platinum Skies, chaired by former Tory treasurer and hedge funder Lord […]
Dudley Joiner’s Team Property Management that also managed RTM retirement sites goes bust owing £635,958
Dudley Joiner’s Team Property Management went bust owing £635,958.61, according to the liquidator’s report (below). His company the Right To Manage Federation Limited, which is not a federation but a private facilitator of right to manage applications, is still trading. Dudley Joiner informed told LKP in 2015 that being disqualified as a company director for […]
Pensioner loses £130,000 to escape Roseland Parc Retirement Village. But it is worth it, she says …
A leaseholder in Roseland Parc Retirement Village, Cornwall, is facing a £130,000 loss on a £350,000 flat in order to move out, but says it is worth it. Eileen Osborne, 72, moved into the property more than 10 years ago, but has now purchased another home locally and has moved out. She is trying to […]
Pensioners face £150,000 fire safety bill at Cestrian Court, but McCarthy and Stone isn’t reponsible (nor is FirstPort)
Pensioners at Cestrian Court in Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, are looking at bills for £150,000 to put right historic build defects even though the site was only built by McCarthy and Stone in 2008. The building appears to have fire compartmentation defects in the loft. These were also cited as defects at Gibson Court, in Hinchley […]
The Times says families ‘lost £3 billion’ on resales of leasehold retirement flats, while developers and freehold speculators made millions
The Times today suggests that families have lost £3 billion on the resale of leasehold retirement flats between 2001 and 2015 in a series of articles that add up to a devastating investigation of the sector. Some 80 per cent of the properties sold had fallen in value, with an average loss of £38,846, the […]
