Help with cat in leasehold flat - Director with passive/aggressive behaviour

pinkshoes

As it is a house cat and there are presumably no cat flaps and it doesn't go outside, just tell them the cat has been got rid of or died, then keep the blinds shut and don't answer the door to directors?!?!?!?

(Not a great solution, but would work for now!!)

NeilCr

princeofpounds said:

This isn't a judicial process. It simply does not matter if the complainant is also a Director. 

Luisa, please read through my post again. There are a number of important issues that I believe you are not fully touching on.

- You indicate that one of the Directors is supportive of you. Have you had a proper conversation with them about whether the Board has actually discussed this, or whether the decision has been taken either by an individual Director and/or staff of the management company (or the agency that operates it). The Directors, as a Board, can overrule these things if they agree to do so. This Director can raise it, if they feel they have the support.

- Please look up the freehold titles for your property. It is very likely to cover all the buildings on the estate, or all the apartment buildings on the estate. It is possible it just applies to your building, but given some things you have said, I suspect not. You cannot assume that a Director who lives in a house is living in a freehold property - it would be unusual, though not impossible, for them to be a Director in that case. You cannot assume that people in the other buildings are not relevant without clarifying the precise structure of the tenure. You still haven't confirmed if you are a share-of-freeholder either, unless I missed it.

- As stated by others subsequent to me, you do not need to remove the cat yet. Enforcement is not a foregone conclusion.

- 

I agree re going back to the supportive director and trying to get more information about what process has been undertaken. As princeofpounds  says it is possible that the directors as a whole could come to a different decision

The set up sounds very much like ours. A mixed estate of flats and houses. In our cases the houses are freehold and we can have pets in these (I own a house) without need for permission. The flats are different and need approval from the directors for pets. I am a director and as a board we are pet friendly so it is usually granted. Any request that came to our management company would be referred to us for instruction

NameUnavailable

Luisaandhercat said:

NameUnavailable said:

macman said:

Forgetting about the cat for the moment; who the hell buys a flat without reading every single word of the lease, 'loosely' or otherwise?
What else could be lurking in there that you 'weren't expecting to find'? 

I would hazard a guess that the majority of buyers never read the lease.

They will only see it late in the process, after paying for mortgage/broker fees, surveys, valuations, searches etc., and then rely on the solicitor to tell them if there's any show stoppers (but doubtful a solicitor will mention clauses about pets in their comments.

In fact a lot of buyers don't even know what the lease is, they think they're buying the actual flat.

And even after all the comments here, I am still strugging to understand how we did not "buy the actual flat"?

(Honest question).

You bought a lease. That bundle of pages of photocopied A4 paper stapled together (if you're lucky) is what you bought.

It is essentially a long term rental agreement for the flat. You don't own any part of the actual property, just the right to live there for X number of years subject to the various terms and conditions of the lease - if you fail to meet your obligations (e.g. paying ground rent or service charges) you could end up having the lease revoked and the freeholder would take full ownership!

You can sell the lease to another party when you want to move, just as you would sell an actual property and the value will usually move in line with the market in the area, as long as it doesn't run down to a short remaining period which will start to have an adverse effect on the value.

[Deleted User]

pinkshoes said:

As it is a house cat and there are presumably no cat flaps and it doesn't go outside, just tell them the cat has been got rid of or died, then keep the blinds shut and don't answer the door to directors?!?!?!?

(Not a great solution, but would work for now!!)

It is dodgy to lie, if you are dishonest you open a can of worms. Life could become a living hell if everyone were to turn against you and start playing silly games. 

AdrianC

Luisaandhercat said:

Believe it or not, when you explain this situation to friends who own flats in different countries (as we did before in Spain, Ireland and Uruguay) they can't understand how there is something called "lease" that can dictate whether you can have an indoor cat in your flat.

I don't believe that there's not similar restrictions on what residents can and can't do in a shared building in those countries.

Don't get hung up on it being a lease.
It's simply the way of telling residents of the building how they are expected to play nicely with other residents.

We do understand (knowing everything we know now; lessons learned) that having a leasehold means you have sometimes less rights than someone who is a tenant

That's simply not true.
Any resident in that building needs to get permission for a pet.
The lease applies to the flat, whoever lives in it.
The only question is whether there's somebody else in between the resident and the building managers - a landlord...

Luisaandhercat said:

NameUnavailable said:
In fact a lot of buyers don't even know what the lease is, they think they're buying the actual flat. 

And even after all the comments here, I am still strugging to understand how we did not "buy the actual flat"?

You did.

You bought everything inside the walls, the fabric of the building, all the infrastructure and utilities, all the fitted furniture/kitchen/bathroom. They are yours. You own them.

What you didn't buy is the outside walls, the roof, the ground the building sits on... Because they're shared between all the other residents of the building. But you did buy the right to use them. But within certain rules, to ensure all residents play nicely with each other. The lease is what defines that.

Scotbot

AdrianC said:

Luisaandhercat said:

Believe it or not, when you explain this situation to friends who own flats in different countries (as we did before in Spain, Ireland and Uruguay) they can't understand how there is something called "lease" that can dictate whether you can have an indoor cat in your flat.

I don't believe that there's not similar restrictions on what residents can and can't do in a shared building in those countries.

I  do, I was amazed how easy it was to rent a flat in the US with multiple dogs and to confuse things further I think it is state specific not federal.  I am not surprised some countries are more lax.
I have learnt from my experiences in that overseas regulations can be wildly different but not before making a few mistakes first

gingercordial

Luisaandhercat said:

NameUnavailable said:

macman said:

Forgetting about the cat for the moment; who the hell buys a flat without reading every single word of the lease, 'loosely' or otherwise?
What else could be lurking in there that you 'weren't expecting to find'? 

I would hazard a guess that the majority of buyers never read the lease.

They will only see it late in the process, after paying for mortgage/broker fees, surveys, valuations, searches etc., and then rely on the solicitor to tell them if there's any show stoppers (but doubtful a solicitor will mention clauses about pets in their comments.

In fact a lot of buyers don't even know what the lease is, they think they're buying the actual flat.

And even after all the comments here, I am still strugging to understand how we did not "buy the actual flat"?

(Honest question).

What you have done by buying a leasehold is like paying rent upfront for 100 years (or however long your leasehold is for).  You have the right to live in that flat for that long, probably longer than you will be alive.  That means you can pass on or sell the remaining time, if you want to.

You did not buy the land the flat sits on.  You did not even buy the outside walls or roof.  The lease will say what parts you do have responsibility for, maybe the inside walls so you can decorate.  You will need to repair things inside your flat.  The lease might say that you have to help pay for repairs for things outside as well.  It will say how this is divided up and when they can ask for your share.

Just like a short rental agreement, it is possible for the "landlord" (here called the "freeholder", who does own the land and the walls) to give some conditions in your very long rental agreement, and state things that you have to ask permission for first.  If you break those conditions effectively you can be evicted (they will terminate the lease) although the process for doing that is much more difficult for them than in a short rental.

It is more secure than just renting from year to year, and you have more rights and responsibilities.  But it is not the same as buying the land and the property freehold, and so you still have "somebody in charge".  In this case unfortunately you have paid for your 100 years upfront and signed an agreement for no pets.  If you want a pet you will have to sell the remaining time to someone else, and move (or get rid of the cat but I would not be able to do that either).

davidmcn

Scotbot said:

AdrianC said:

Luisaandhercat said:

Believe it or not, when you explain this situation to friends who own flats in different countries (as we did before in Spain, Ireland and Uruguay) they can't understand how there is something called "lease" that can dictate whether you can have an indoor cat in your flat.

I don't believe that there's not similar restrictions on what residents can and can't do in a shared building in those countries.

I  do, I was amazed how easy it was to rent a flat in the US with multiple dogs and to confuse things further I think it is state specific not federal.  I am not surprised some countries are more lax.
I have learnt from my experiences in that overseas regulations can be wildly different but not before making a few mistakes first

Maybe not specifically about pets, but I would expect any apartment block anywhere to have some sort of regulations set out in the titles.

Scotbot

davidmcn said:

Scotbot said:

AdrianC said:

Luisaandhercat said:

Believe it or not, when you explain this situation to friends who own flats in different countries (as we did before in Spain, Ireland and Uruguay) they can't understand how there is something called "lease" that can dictate whether you can have an indoor cat in your flat.

I don't believe that there's not similar restrictions on what residents can and can't do in a shared building in those countries.

I  do, I was amazed how easy it was to rent a flat in the US with multiple dogs and to confuse things further I think it is state specific not federal.  I am not surprised some countries are more lax.
I have learnt from my experiences in that overseas regulations can be wildly different but not before making a few mistakes first

Maybe not specifically about pets, but I would expect any apartment block anywhere to have some sort of regulations set out in the titles.

True but you don't know what you don't know and often people wrongly assume rules will be similar to what they  are used to. The OP admits it was their mistake but it is one I can relate to. I only discovered I had been voting incorrectly overseas after several years.  I understood about preference voting and the nice man who gave me my ballot form asked if I understood how to vote. Of course I thought, you just tick the appropriate boxes but I was unaware of the above or below the line rule. Never occurred to me 

L_T_88

Unlike some other qualified covenants, there's no implication on the Landlord to act reasonably for such consents. 

I would read the following FTT decision, which is very similar to your situation (including a medical conditon) and found that keeping a cat was a breach of covenant - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5dc44188ed915d3a212b8ad4/Flat_3_Durley_Chine.pdf