The Flagship Housing Association is accused of racking up maintenance fees for grass cutting by 150 per cent at Danforth Close, Framlingham, in Suffolk. Diana Cook, 69, says she and other residents at the 12-flat block will be paying £150 each a year – up from £40 at present. Maintaining the grounds will risen from […]
Archives for 2016
Avoid this poisoned chalice from Tchenguiz
February 18, 2016 By
A tactic to undermine residents’ right to manage ambitions by Estates and Management – which manages the various freehold vehicles of the Tchenguiz Family Trust, based in the British Virgin Islands – is to offer to dump FirstPort and replace it with another management company. And here they are: CPBigwood, Inspired Property Management, Warwick Estates […]
If you want to reform leasehold, this is how you could do it
February 12, 2016 By
The paper below by Philip Rainey QC was presented to the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership’s all-party round-table meeting at Westminster on January 29 2015. It is a superb analysis of the defects of leasehold law, along with suggestions to reform them. Mr Rainey makes clear that these views are not necessarily wholly, or even in part, […]
No thanks! We don’t want to inherit Brook Court flat with all its service charges
February 10, 2016 By
A family does not want to inherit a retirement flat because it is now worthless and would come with service charge liabilities. The flat at Brook Court in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, is advertised for sale at £97,500 here The flat is owned by an elderly woman, who has dementia and has been in care for more […]
LEASE: We need to make a million quid a year by 2020
February 4, 2016 By
The Leasehold Advisory Service conference 2016 The annual conference of the Leasehold Advisory Service saved until the last moment its most dramatic bombshell: by the year 2020 LEASE needs to be self-financing. The Department of Communities and Local Government, on which LEASE is dependent, is facing 30 per cent cuts in budget. This inevitably means […]
AgeUK: sort yourselves out!
February 4, 2016 By
It is very sad to see it reported today that AgeUK has been pushing expensive energy tariffs to the elderly in exchange for £6 million a year from energy giant E.ON. The Sun reported this in an investigation this morning Age UK recommended a special rate from E.ON which saw pensioners typically pay £1,049 for […]
80% of Londoners like living in a flat, even ones run by FirstPort
February 1, 2016 By
FirstPort / Peverel, the country’s largest and most controversial apartment manager, has interviewed 738 Londoners and found that they quite like living in a flat. As they bought a flat or chose to rent in the first place, this is encouraging news and they don’t feel that they have made a mistake. It did not […]
Why are retirement ground rents so high?
February 1, 2016 By
… because it is what retirement housebuilders can get away with, along with 125 year leases, high estate agency fees, try-on documentation fees on sale, exit fees, transfer fees, sublet fees, contingency fund fees … AND plummeting capital values Thank you Sebastian, We are stuck with it. I have a nephew living in Buckinghamshire who has […]
Another day, another set of fees in a retirement flat sale …
January 31, 2016 By
Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to make you aware of the exorbitant transfer fees, contingency fee & charges for information packs that we were charged by E&M Estates Management Ltd when I sold my parents flat last week. The flat in question was built by Mcarthy & Stone in Deal, Kent, managed by Peverel & […]
LEASE: Don’t be panicked over Triplerose multi-block RTM ruling
January 28, 2016 By
(… which is what we have been saying all along) Ten months after the Triplerose decision in the Court of Appeal on multi-block RTMs, the Leasehold Advisory Service has issued its advice: don’t do anything. “The advice to the customers for now can only be to do nothing, unless the landlord starts any action of […]
Daily Mail reports retirement flat rip-offs, with the Law Commission stepping in to stop them
January 19, 2016 By
The Daily Mail has reported on the Law Commission report into event fees with a robust article. The author can expect a deluge of housebuilder requests to have lunch, at very expensive London restaurants, in order to “talk the issue through”. The Daily Mail found the Law Commission report rather more robust than Campaign against […]
Telegraph reports surge in leasehold newbuilds
January 19, 2016 By
A good article in the Telegraph about leasehold newbuild flats being on the rise. They make up 43pc of all newbuild registrations with the Land Registry, compared with 22pc in 1996. While leasehold newbuild flats were up by roughly 10,000, leasehold houses also sharply increased: registrations of newbuild detached leasehold houses more than doubled in […]
