Issue with freeholder

JamesM72

Hi, am new here - any help, opinions or advice with the following would be gratefully received.

My partner and I purchased the lease on a flat a couple of years ago. During the process of buying the flat the freeholder mentioned there was an issue with damp in the back room that the previous lease owners should have fixed, and was demanding that £3000 be held back from the profit of the sale of the flat in order to sort this issue.

At the time of the sale the previous leaseholders agreed to leave a cheque for with their solicitors for £3000 for the purpose of fixing the damp if there was indeed a problem with it (with a time limit on the cheque, so basically if no problems found within 3 months then the cheque is torn up).

It seems to be the case that neither my solicitor, nor the sellers solicitor informed the freeholder's solicitor - so he was completely unaware of this arrangement, and as the 3 month limit has passed the cheque has been torn up.

Furthermore, our freeholder claims he never agreed to the transfer of the lease without the previous leaseholders handing over the 3k for damp repair. I also found out that the deed of covenant does not have his signature on it.

On top of all of this, we have only just been able to make contact with the freeholder - no-one had up to date contact details for him, and his solicitors refused to pass them on to us when we requested them. He claims to have no knowledge of the sale finalising...

Our solicitors are being a bit evasive on this whole issue... it all sounds a bit of a mess to me, and someone is to blame, but who??

Fire_Fox

Welcome! So was the sale properly completed or not? Have you written to your conveyancer and asked why the deed was not signed? Why do the previous leaseholders need to pay for the damp, is that just their share or the whole cost? What kind of damp - rising, penetrating, condensation?

Are you not receiving invoices for service charges and ground rent with the landlord's or agents address on? If there is a managing agent have you written asking for the superior landlord's address? Have you downloaded the freehold title for the building from land registry (£3) to get the freeholder's address?
http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/
http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/landlord's_address.htm (AFAIK this applies to longhold and shorthold tenants)
http://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/www/wps/portal/!ut/p/b1/04_Sj9CPykssy0xPLMnMz0vMAfGjzOKNjSxMDA1NjDwsjM3MDTxN3dyNDUNMjQ1MjPWDU_P0C7IdFQG9k5Tz/

JamesM72

thanks for your reply:

"Are you not receiving invoices for service charges and ground rent with the landlord's or agents address on?"

He was addressing them to the previous occupants and we never saw them (they had the mail forwarded). One of the reasons we were trying to get in touch with him was so we could pay these (which we have done now we are in touch with him)

If there is a managing agent have you written asking for the superior landlord's address?

There is no managing agent for the property

"Have you downloaded the freehold title for the building from land registry (£3) to get the freeholder's address?"

As I said, we are now in touch with the freeholder - he had moved to America, and we managed to get his number of a friend of his who was doing up one of the properties a couple of doors down the road.

RE the damp, I'm not sure what it was, but the previous leaseholders had put a damp course in, and we fixed a dry rot issue in the back room, replacing all the wooden beams and floorboards that were riddled with it. There was a bit of a return of damp last year, but that was due to us drying clothes in the back room, once we stopped that the damp disappeared.

RE writing to our conveyancer, I wrote to them recently, and they claimed that "A Deed of Covenant was required but this is not required to be signed by the freeholder".

Furthermore they say that "Upon completion we served "Notice of Transfer & Charge" on the freeholders solicitors as required under the landlords replies to enquiries. If the freeholder was not made aware of the transfer of ownership this would be an issue for him to raise with his solicitors XXXX Solicitors as we had certainly served the document on them and paid their required fee."

Fire_Fox

So do you now have an address in England or Wales at which to serve notices on the freeholder? He has to give you that not just a telephone number and you don't have to pay anything without proper invoices and the prescribed information.
http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/
Do you have a solid paper trail of paying the monies to the right person or company? The mate down the road could have given you anyone's telephone number.

Is the listing for your leasehold flat on land registry correct? If so I wouldn't worry too much about the posturing by your freeholder, if he moved to the US without leaving a forwarding address and doesn't even know the leaseholders have changed he doesn't seem very competent.

Drying clothing leads to condensation damp which is for the leaseholder/ tenant to resolve; DPC is for rising damp which would often be for the freeholder to fix and charge to the leaseholder(s). It seems a very peculiar way of handing it. Read your long lease - usually the landlord has liability for structural repairs and maintenance and this is shared between all the leaseholders.

loubel

The issue with the damp sounds a little strange and your best bet is probably to go back to your solicitors and ask them to clarify exactly what the arrangement for the damp retention was ie what it was for and who was responsible for doing the works.

I would be concerned though that a sole freeholder who lives in America and hasn't employed a managing agent is going to struggle to meet his obligations under the Lease. How many other flats are there and who is responsible for maintenance of the building/common parts under the Lease? Who have you been paying ground rent and service charges to since you bought?