Yet again retirement housing is in the news: this time Retirement Villages charging £50,000 in exit fees to a family who sold a two-bedroom flat at Mayford Grange, in Woking in Surrey. The Sunday Times ran the story yesterday, although Retirement Villages, which is a member of the Association of Retirement Community Operators, makes its […]
Housebuilders sitting on 600,000 plots of land, while taxpayers pour in billions through Help To Buy The Guardian reveals the extend of plc house builders landbanking in an article published on December 30 2018. Sadly omits Churchill Retirement and McCarthy and Stone – the latter having a particularly healthy land bank. It argued that – […]
UPDATE January 2 2019: MHCLG officials inform LKP today that the email to leaseholders saying that they had submitted blank response information to the leasehold reform consultation was sent out “in error”. They are being contacted again today. Officials informed LKP: “We want to reassure you and the APPG that we want to hear […]
Here is an encouraging letter from the owners of a Persimmon leasehold house at Links Crescent, Seascale, in Cumbria. There is nothing remarkable in Persimmon selling a freehold for around £3,750, which is 25 x annual ground rent of £150. This is what our spoon-fed plc housebuilders – whose profits have been driven by taxpayer […]
In today’s Financial Times interview with Vincent Tchenguiz, the indebted former tycoon, says the sale of his Fairhold Securitisation Limited has collapsed because of buyers’ concerns over government reforms to leasehold. But in 2015 Moody’s downgraded the securitization, based on ground rents and other incomes in residential freeholds in the retirement sector. https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-Downgrades-UK-ground-rent-backed-Fairhold-Securitisation-Limited–PR_330495 While Moody’s […]
After years of campaigning by LKP, it looks as if the sale of newbuild leasehold houses is coming to an end. With support from the NLC and the national newspapers in recent years, it has become more and more difficult for developers to convince customers that a leasehold house is somehow a good idea. The […]
Twelve months ago the leaseholders in Citiscape Croydon were in a very dark place. They were being taken to the Tribunal by FirstPort to prove that they should be liable for cladding costs, which were estimated at over £2 million – over £20,000 per flat. The leaseholders had been given poor advice by LEASE on […]
Monaco-based freeholder John Christodoulou was in tribunal at the beginning of the month fighting the court appointed manager at Canary Riverside, last week he was back again in a row with leaseholders at West India Quay. The two prime London Docklands sites, both near Canary Wharf, have witnessed repeated acrimony between the residential leaseholders and […]
Commonhold is slowly working its way into the national consciousness – 16 years after being introduced to the statute book. Last Friday, Sam Barker in the Daily Telegraph reported the Law Commission’s study of the tenure. Commonhold exists almost all jurisdictions apart from England and Wales, where flats and over a million houses are held […]
A last minute attempt to stop LKP from publishing three legal opinions extremely critical of the government’s bungled reform to Recognised Tenants’ Associations failed last week. The government introduced a statutory instrument in October that has actually made the position of leaseholders worse. The failing was referenced in the Commons by Sir Peter Bottomley with […]
This is the first of 3 articles looking at the history of the RTA project and the findings of the most recent consultation. The stated objective of Ministers since 2014 is to make it easier to form a formal residents group known as a Recognised Tenants Association (RTA). LKP has argued from the outset that […]
The APPG on leasehold and commonhold reform has asked two specialist barristers to provide formal opinions on the RTA SI which came into force on 1st November 2018. “The Tenants’ Associations (Provisions Relating to Recognition and Provision of Information) (England) Regulations 2018” The first opinion was provided by barrister Rebecca Cattermole of Tanfield Chambers. Miss […]
In this section, we look at the results of an experimental test of the RTA SI to see how it might work in practice. We then go on to draw conclusions from all three papers. A test of the RTA SI We have been able to use the leaseholders at the Charter Quay (CQ) site […]
The Leasehold Advisory Service, the government funded Leasehold Advisory Service, has been under review by the government for much of the last ten years. This seems to suggest that something is wrong, yet the government’s long-standing support for the Leasehold Advisory Service continues. LKP has, after many requests, obtained the two most recent reviews of […]
– Select Committee deluged with complaints about taxpayer funded organisation – It failed to alert government to scandals over ground rents and proliferation of leasehold houses – Why did it hold seminars advising freeholders how to exploit leaseholders? – ‘Huge credibility problem’ for LEASE among leaseholders, says MP: it is working against them – Why […]
Push for alternative to leasehold system Expansion of the commonhold system of home ownership as an alternative to leasehold tenancies has been urged by the government’s law reform adviser. Commonhold – where people own their homes without an expiring lease – was introduced 14 years ago, but has been little-used. Meanwhile, there have […]
The Help To Buy scheme that has hugely boosted plc house builders share prices – and turned the likes of Persimmon’s Jeff Fairburn and David Jenkinson into multimillionaires – is not available for commonhold properties. This astonishing revelation comes from small house builder (and former leaseholder) Stewart Moxon, of Hopton Build. He trying to selling […]
Two years after the leaseholders at Canary Riverside thought that they had escaped from the clutches of freeholder John Christodoulou after they secured a court-appointed managing agent, the legal wrangling continues. This week saw the 19th day in tribunal since Monaco-based freeholder John Christodoulou lost control of the site’s management in October 2016, when his […]
