OWN A FLAT? Leasehold Enfranchisement

Northernproperty

If you live in a block of flats like I do then why don't you look at buying the freehold intrerest in them? Or at least extending your lease?

Many mortgage companies won't look at flats where the lease has less than a specified number of years remaining.

I have recently been part of long leaseholders where I live who have bought our own Freehold, we have effectively bought the management company. So now we have no ground rent to pay, as we would effectively be paying it to ourselves.

The ground rent was due to double after 25 years (of which there are 10 years gone) so we have protected ourselves against that.

I would recommend others looking to do this in their blocks. By not doing so you seriously affect your asset value.

2sides2everystory

NB This post was in response to a first post made by a qualified solicitor I think which mysteriously got deleted this afternoon. Maybe it was spam or maybe the solicitor got cold feet.

Just so my post can be seen inperspective, she was replying to the OP extolling the virtues of an organisation she said she ran call ALEP where the LE stood for Lease Enfranchisment and the P stood for Professional.

Anyway, my post having seen hers (now deleted with some involvement of the MSE Forum Editorial Team 3) was as follows:

I see that, just as RICS is open to a surprisingly broad membership thesedays, your website encourages managing agents to become members (although I see Mr Cohen, a Committee member is the only declared managing agent in your current list of 120 odd members). Interestingly I see no suggestion that blocks of flats management companies should join (those which most closely represent the interests of leaseholders and have the legal responsibility to manage service charge expenditures for blocks of flats properly and economically).

In practice companies like ours (represented by volunteer leaseholders as directors) are stuck with at best the best of a bad bunch of unregulated managing agents who are often members of ARMA. Those are usually the biggest managing agents and they hold conferences and dinners like you do for their members but of course not their clients! Managing agents like that often have a penchant for collecting logos on their letterheads like logos might go out of fashion. One might often discover FSA, RICS and ARMA logos on the same managing agent letterhead but they are effectively regulated by none.

Companies like ours (representing leaseholders directly) generally do not have a budget or remit to pay professionals like ALEP members for advice on matters such as enfranchisement, do we? So who do you propose pays your members fees?

In practice, is it true to say that the only "not for profit" angle which your organisation promotes is the provision of a list of service providers (mostly legals) who themselves command high fees?

Call me cynical if you like but the following ALEP rules seem designed to protect the status quo which, because almost everything associated with management of leases is unregulated, is pretty dire and requires total reform:

• Not to act in a manner which compromises or impairs, or is likely to compromise or impair the integrity of a member, the reputation of ALEP or the high standards of professional conduct expected of a member.
• Not to act in a way that could bring discredit on the profession or lead to a loss of public confidence in it.
• Not to criticise or disparage unjustifiably other members.

I would say that if all and sundry managing agents were to join your membership then those rulles would pretty soon gag your organisation from exposing poor practices which plague leaseholders interests generally.

They say first impressions are often the most true. I have been aware of the existence of your organisation for all of 45 minutes. Whilst I am pleased to see that you do not seem yet to have recruited more than one unregulated managing agent, I am not sure where you stand other than as a group of lawyers and surveyors who know a little about enfranchisement and see a marketing opportunity arising out of the planning boom of the 90s which mean there are lots of 99 year leases reduced now to the low eighties and which are exercising minds.

A lot of questions come to mind:

Are you legal members offering pro-bono services as part of their commitment to ALEP?

Are your members for example, adept at teasing leaseholder data out of existing managing agents so that every leaseholder can be effectively approached and given a real co-oredinated choice about enfranchisement? It would seem to me that most managing agents are completely against the idea because they lose control of something they consider as a gravy train.

What are we to make of your first post, Anna Bailey? Is it spam? Or are you a truly group of legals offering not for profit enfranchisement services? Or just a group of lawyers who fancy creating a niche?

I guess I am asking "We can see you have declared ALEP it is not for profit but is ALEP really a unique force designed principally for the public good?" Leaseholders for sure need such an organisation to facilitate enfranchisements and the like. Are you really it?