Buying Advice (FLAT) no lease or management company details

neilanthony

Having read the lease, there are 3 parties documented. I'm guessing the landlord is the freeholder. I've done some digging but there is very little information about the freeholder which is actually a business.

I've done a company check on the Management company and that is definitely disolved.

1) Landlord (lessor)

2) Tenant (lesse)

3) Managment company - Status Disolved.

Fire_Fox

Superior landlord is the freeholder, yes, they are ultimately responsible. Check land registry to see they still hold the head lease.

Richard_Webster

I've done a company check on the Management company and that is definitely disolved.

1) Landlord (lessor)

2) Tenant (lesse)

3) Managment company - Status Disolved.

If the management company is named as a party in the lease rather than simply doing the management work for the freeholder, then it will probably have all the maintenance and insurance responsibilities, which means if company goes then there is nobody with any responsibility to do this work.

Very often there is no fall back covenant requiring the freeholder to do the work if the management company defaults. Crummy way to draft a lease, in my view, but nobody takes much notice of things I say!

propertyman

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Superior landlord is the freeholder, yes, they are ultimately responsible. Check land registry to see they still hold the head lease.

Firefox I think that you might benefit from a little bit of reading about leases.

There is a flat lease here which is tripartate, and the lessor has responsibility except that the third party, the ManCo, has been included to discharge those obligations.

While this usually involves virtually all of the responsiblities, the precisee extent should always be checked in each case.

Now the lessor may have a head lease ( granted to them by a freeholder) out of which he has granted individual leases, but even so, in the same way as the lessor has no responsiblity for the ManCo's failure, nor would the freeholder have for the superior leaseholder's ( in the case the lessor of the flat) failure.

Buying the freehold

Now, even of the OP buys the freehold, he cannot take back those responsibilities unless the lease allows him, as RW said.

Dissolved Man Co

Turning to the OP's question then there are 3 basic options
- reinstate the man co normally expensive and hard to do
- vary all the leases to recognise a new one
- vary the lease to change the Man Co's job to revert to the freeholder

or have the majority of leaseholders apply for right to manage which is fresh start.


Finally

As the above needs the consent of most other owners, if the property is now in say disrepair or uninsured you can consider applying to the LVT to appoint a manager who can take over the ManCo's role asd hti takes only one perosn to do so.