Leasehold - roof water escaped significantly into my property today causing damage

EssexHebridean

CookwiththeE said:

I was not sent correspondence about repairs.EssexHebridean said:p

Jellynailer said:

I agree that most of my suggestions are well open to criticism including I should have said lease and not deeds.  

Whatever the document is, it is poorly drafted and my fuzzy brain (awake since 1 a.m. due to my own leak) now understands that the reference to decorating external walls applies to the inner side of external walls.

there really is nothing unclear or poorly drafted about that clause - it’s a pretty standard lease clause to be honest.

However, the OP.s flat is under another flat which also should have similar problems to the OP if the cause is a roof problem - which is why I suggest the problem is due to a blocked down pipe where the OP said it has come adrift from the wall.

the OP says they are a second floor flat in a three storey block. If this is correct then they will not have a flat above them - I would assume this is why they are getting the worst of the issues from the roof.

I wish to further suggest that I believe all leaseholders shoud have a right to copies of, or at least to view, the records of the Management Company which should show the date and specification of works to the outside of the building(s).

These documents will have been provided as part of the sales/management lack as part of the conveyancing process. They will have been sent to the OP to go through - that again is standard in conveyancing transactions. If the costs of the individual repairs were not explained, this information could have been asked for in enquiries. 

Finally, re the comments on insurance, I sympathise with the OP who had no reason to suspect that this would be needed ony two weeks after moving in.  Also many policies do not cover the first month or so.  I also ended up without insurance because, 30 years before I moved in, the cowboy developer had registered all 13 dwellings  (5 flats & 8 houses) as flats so my insurance application was refused.  It sems that all 8 house owners at least had never had insurance.  End of this subect I hope - stable door & all that..

I have never seen a contents insurance policy which doesn’t cover the first month - that would be a nonsense. I also suspect it is incredibly unlikely that 8 other home owners had been without insurance - not least as they would mostly have had mortgages and so would have had to not only have buildings insurance (which would also be affected by an address issue) but also to produce roof of this prior to mortgage funds being released, in most cases. I suspect your issue was a one-off,or could have been sorted by chatting with your neighbours to see how they resolved things! 

OP - back to your issues. Well done for getting things in writing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but for the future you will obviously know that with your management Co you need to back up immediately in writing, copied to the freeholder also. Hopefully you will get at least a temporary repair carried out this afternoon, with works to repair the internal damage and a full roof repair to follow. You may well need to pursue those things vigorously once the urgency has faded. Although the electrics will probably be fine after a few days drying out, I agree that the ideal is to get them checked properly. As said above, you may need to arrange repairs internally yourself via a claim on the freeholders buildings insurance - your freeholder or the management Co will advise if this is the case. 

I was not sent correspondence about repairs prior by the management co, I think I see a lengthy court case looming. No reference, he only thing mentioned was that the roof needs repairing at some point, no mention of past works.

Also, there is a flat above me, it's like a conversion so one side is a flat roof and one is a sloped surface, that's the leaking side. We had to go into her annex or whatever it’s k called to put a bucket in there last night (fire service). 

Ok - so you are the first floor - one flat below, another above, is that correct? I presumed otherwise because in your OP you said “I am a second floor flat in a 3 story old building.” in that case I dread to think what state your poor upstairs neighbour must be in, but at least you can join forces to try to get things sorted - that could be very useful. 

On the correspondence about the roof needing repairing - did you ask your solicitor to raise that with the seller’s solicitor via an enquiry? To ask what the repair related to, or indeed what the likely estimated costs were in relation to the proposed works? It sounds like you were advised about issues with the roof, from what you are saying? 

CookwiththeE

Tucosalamanca said:

We're experiencing on of the wettest Septembers on record, buildings all over the country are experiencing water ingress.
This stuff happens, it doesn't mean that anyone's been negligent....

The agent has done well to arrange a visit so quickly.
Unless the fault is simply a gutter outlet that needs unblocking, repairs are unlikely to happen quickly.
There's simply not enough workers to meet the ongoing demand, not even close.

OP might be a bit disappointed on how this plays out...

Not at all, I'm prepared for the long run. Perhaps I haven't given all context. But there was a prior flood on the roof, they patched job it, then said rhe roof needs repairing for 2 years, now it has come to such wet September on record and it's flooded because of their lack of action - is that not the definition of negligence.

Its also quite funny how people come for help or advice here buy are just treated with disdain or disrespect. Please have some consideration that people are just trying to figure things out.

EssexHebridean

Nobody is treating you with disdain - on the contrary, people have gone out of their way to offer help and suggestions, and to sympathise and in some cases empathise. Sometimes though there is a need to ask many questions to try to get the context for the situation, and sometimes things are entirely clear in an OP’s postings so need to be drilled into and clarified.

CookwiththeE

EssexHebridean said:

CookwiththeE said:

I was not sent correspondence about repairs.EssexHebridean said:p

Jellynailer said:

I agree that most of my suggestions are well open to criticism including I should have said lease and not deeds.  

Whatever the document is, it is poorly drafted and my fuzzy brain (awake since 1 a.m. due to my own leak) now understands that the reference to decorating external walls applies to the inner side of external walls.

there really is nothing unclear or poorly drafted about that clause - it’s a pretty standard lease clause to be honest.

However, the OP.s flat is under another flat which also should have similar problems to the OP if the cause is a roof problem - which is why I suggest the problem is due to a blocked down pipe where the OP said it has come adrift from the wall.

the OP says they are a second floor flat in a three storey block. If this is correct then they will not have a flat above them - I would assume this is why they are getting the worst of the issues from the roof.

I wish to further suggest that I believe all leaseholders shoud have a right to copies of, or at least to view, the records of the Management Company which should show the date and specification of works to the outside of the building(s).

These documents will have been provided as part of the sales/management lack as part of the conveyancing process. They will have been sent to the OP to go through - that again is standard in conveyancing transactions. If the costs of the individual repairs were not explained, this information could have been asked for in enquiries. 

Finally, re the comments on insurance, I sympathise with the OP who had no reason to suspect that this would be needed ony two weeks after moving in.  Also many policies do not cover the first month or so.  I also ended up without insurance because, 30 years before I moved in, the cowboy developer had registered all 13 dwellings  (5 flats & 8 houses) as flats so my insurance application was refused.  It sems that all 8 house owners at least had never had insurance.  End of this subect I hope - stable door & all that..

I have never seen a contents insurance policy which doesn’t cover the first month - that would be a nonsense. I also suspect it is incredibly unlikely that 8 other home owners had been without insurance - not least as they would mostly have had mortgages and so would have had to not only have buildings insurance (which would also be affected by an address issue) but also to produce roof of this prior to mortgage funds being released, in most cases. I suspect your issue was a one-off,or could have been sorted by chatting with your neighbours to see how they resolved things! 

OP - back to your issues. Well done for getting things in writing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but for the future you will obviously know that with your management Co you need to back up immediately in writing, copied to the freeholder also. Hopefully you will get at least a temporary repair carried out this afternoon, with works to repair the internal damage and a full roof repair to follow. You may well need to pursue those things vigorously once the urgency has faded. Although the electrics will probably be fine after a few days drying out, I agree that the ideal is to get them checked properly. As said above, you may need to arrange repairs internally yourself via a claim on the freeholders buildings insurance - your freeholder or the management Co will advise if this is the case. 

I was not sent correspondence about repairs prior by the management co, I think I see a lengthy court case looming. No reference, he only thing mentioned was that the roof needs repairing at some point, no mention of past works.

Also, there is a flat above me, it's like a conversion so one side is a flat roof and one is a sloped surface, that's the leaking side. We had to go into her annex or whatever it’s k called to put a bucket in there last night (fire service). 

Ok - so you are the first floor - one flat below, another above, is that correct? I presumed otherwise because in your OP you said “I am a second floor flat in a 3 story old building.” in that case I dread to think what state your poor upstairs neighbour must be in, but at least you can join forces to try to get things sorted - that could be very useful. 

On the correspondence about the roof needing repairing - did you ask your solicitor to raise that with the seller’s solicitor via an enquiry? To ask what the repair related to, or indeed what the likely estimated costs were in relation to the proposed works? It sounds like you were advised about issues with the roof, from what you are saying? 

On my mortage I'm second floor. There is a floor below me (1st floor) then there is ground floor then there is basement and the one above me is the technical third floor. She's absolutely fine though so it does suggest it is drainage, however the roof is noted as needing replacing. I admit I overlooked it, hindsight as you said is great.

EssexHebridean

Your building sounds very complicated! 

If the one above you is fine, then are you absolutely certain the water is definitely coming through the roof? Obviously without knowing how the roofline on the building works and whether the floors are staggered in some way it’s not easy to say.

Easy to overlook stuff when there’s lots going on - I bet everyone on here has done that with unfortunate results once! I think your best bet now is to get clarity on exactly where the water has come from, then the appropriate steps will hopefully become clear from there. 

Jellynailer

CookwiththeE said:

Its also quite funny how people come for help or advice here buy are just treated with disdain or disrespect. Please have some consideration that people are just trying to figure things out.

I do so agree, having started as a newbie on 1/8 and got only relevant help which was brilliant, I was very quickly given forumite status and have since been on a learning curve.  The result of which is to focus on helping the OP as best I can by making suggestions rather than opinions and offering insights from my considerable past experience that I hope are helpful.  I now ignore negative comments and return to try to help sort out the nature of the problem to be solved viz.

My latest experience is that I have pinned down the cause of my own leak problem, or more correctly my home help has by standing on a stepladder in my back garden to photograph my roof and guttering over a clematiis archway that blocked the view.  The problem is merely due to one roof tile that is out of sync and this is not near the site of the drip.  She also checked the length of the area over my bed with a damp meter showing 7 through to 9 in the corner under the roof tile.  This leads me to suggest you try and find a way to get a photo of what is above you (hopefully you or a friend has a drone).

One more, I hope helpful, comment.   My home help will be regularly using the damp meter to check progress for drying out.  It will only be when the damp meter reading is 0 along the entire ceiling area that redecorating can be done.

EssexHebridean

How are things looking now @CookwiththeE ? Did you get the promised visit from a roofer and were they able to do anything constructive? Have you now got electric even if not in the worst affected room? 

Jellynailer

EssexHebridean said:

How are things looking now @CookwiththeE ? Did you get the promised visit from a roofer and were they able to do anything constructive? Have you now got electric even if not in the worst affected room? 

I have kept this thread bookmarked in case the OP does update us in the future but the information about being for the long haul means, I suggest, to expect an update after only 4 days is not likely to be high on the list of all that needs to sort out..

Instead, perhaps you could answer a question.  .

The background to this is that my body clock is still out of sync because, like the OP, I suffered to lots of water damage in less than a week. = two sleepless nights.  So I am up waiting to feel sleepy and decided to check out some of my bookmarks.  Your post came up and you have also posted on other sites I bookmarked so I looked back through this site.

Questions.  Your post quoting me and criticising much of what I said has a 'Thanks' ticked.  When I clicked on this the thanks is not from the OP but from someone else who has not posted on this thread but has been a co-poster of yours on other threads.  Can you explain this?  Should he not delete it because it makes it seem that the OP thanked you for having a go at me.

EssexHebridean

OK - at the risk of taking the thread off-topic, but as you have asked for help, let's go for it..

Jellynailer said:

EssexHebridean said:

How are things looking now @CookwiththeE ? Did you get the promised visit from a roofer and were they able to do anything constructive? Have you now got electric even if not in the worst affected room? 

I have kept this thread bookmarked in case the OP does update us in the future but the information about being for the long haul means, I suggest, to expect an update after only 4 days is not likely to be high on the list of all that needs to sort out..

Instead, perhaps you could answer a question.  .

The background to this is that my body clock is still out of sync because, like the OP, I suffered to lots of water damage in less than a week. = two sleepless nights.  So I am up waiting to feel sleepy and decided to check out some of my bookmarks.  Your post came up and you have also posted on other sites I bookmarked so I looked back through this site.

Questions.  Your post quoting me and criticising much of what I said has a 'Thanks' ticked.  When I clicked on this the thanks is not from the OP but from someone else who has not posted on this thread but has been a co-poster of yours on other threads.  Can you explain this?  Should he not delete it because it makes it seem that the OP thanked you for having a go at me.

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about to be honest - I don't really post on other forum type sites than this one, so I'm not sure where you might have found anything of that nature.  I have to say also, it's slightly uncomfortable to think that someone might have been stalking another around the internet, that's not really something you want to be shouting about, IMO as it's a bit of a "red flag" behaviour wise.

You certainly don't need to explain your reasons for being up at 3am - as a female of "a certain age" I am very familiar with periods of insomnia, although I do find that reading a book is better for encouraging sleepiness rather than using screens - it's well known that blue light from screens can ward of tiredness. 

As for the "thanks" thing which I presume refers to this site rather than any other -  the thanks feature is something that people can use in all sorts of ways - some use it to indicate agreement with a post, or to say that they found it entertaining in some way. Others find it useful to "signpost" where they have read to in a thread - particularly in long running ones. It can also be handy to get an idea of how a forum member is perceived by others when trying to judge how relevant or helpful their input might be on a subject - a lot of "thanks" can mean that they have been seen as very helpful during their membership of the forum.  I can't speak for any other users as to how they might use it - I tend to find it suits me to use it as a mixture of those things though depending on the circumstance.  If you do accidentally "thank" a post at any stage, then it's easy to remove it by just clicking again - and it will remove your thanks. As for other people's decisions whether to "thank" a post or not - that is entirely up to the individual, it's not anything that should ever be asked for or courted. It's a bit like your forum post count really - most of us regulars on here regard both as being interesting, but not of any real relevance.  Finally - and hopefully answering your remaining point - there are a core of "regular" posters here who post across various boards and who are often about to help and support those posting with questions or issues - and yes, those people are often active on the same threads, so it shouldn't be surprising when you see the same names cropping up again and again. 

As an aside - as has been said before, we are really keen to keep the information provided on the MSE forum accurate and as helpful as it can be - therefore when we see misinformation being posted whether that is deliberate and malicious (very rare, thankfully, although like all forums we do have occasional issues with this) whether because someone is simply misunderstanding what is being said, or whether down to a degree of Dunning-Kruger effect, we do try to make sure that is corrected. Nobody here will criticise factual information, delivered in a polite and helpful way. Little things like learning about "shouting" - writing sentences in capitals, or in bold, or worse still in capitals AND in bold which is very shouty should be avoided as it's really rude - the equivalent of going up to someone in the street and getting right "in their face" if you like. 

Hopefully that helps to explain the way the site works a bit better for you Jellynailer - I appreciate it can be a confusing place for someone new to it, and it's up to us more long-standing "part of the furniture" brigade to try to help explain stuff where we can!  

YoungBlueEyes

Jellynailer said:

EssexHebridean said:

How are things looking now @CookwiththeE ? Did you get the promised visit from a roofer and were they able to do anything constructive? Have you now got electric even if not in the worst affected room? 

I have kept this thread bookmarked in case the OP does update us in the future but the information about being for the long haul means, I suggest, to expect an update after only 4 days is not likely to be high on the list of all that needs to sort out..

Instead, perhaps you could answer a question.  .

The background to this is that my body clock is still out of sync because, like the OP, I suffered to lots of water damage in less than a week. = two sleepless nights.  So I am up waiting to feel sleepy and decided to check out some of my bookmarks.  Your post came up and you have also posted on other sites I bookmarked so I looked back through this site.

Questions.  Your post quoting me and criticising much of what I said has a 'Thanks' ticked.  When I clicked on this the thanks is not from the OP but from someone else who has not posted on this thread but has been a co-poster of yours on other threads.  Can you explain this?  Should he not delete it because it makes it seem that the OP thanked you for having a go at me.

I wasn't going to reply to this, but as you're still a fairly new user, I will.

Speaking for myself, I click "thanks" for a few different reasons. Anything from gawd that made me laugh!, to ooh interesting/useful, and sometimes it means thanks for having the gumption to say a thing which needed saying. 

A person who has clicked thanks (for whatever reason) is probably someone who is reading along, but doesn't feel the need to comment as someone else has said what they were going to. I do that myself, I've possibly 'thanked' more than I've posted.  A person can click the thanks button again to undo it, but you can't request it just because you don't like it. This site can be a little ...blunt... at times, but blunt is often needed. A lot of people on here are professionals who have given up their time to help someone, if they have the specific knowledge to do so. A lot of times people don't like the answer but that's life. 

The majority of people who post on here will write helpful or guiding posts, based either on their direct experience or from a position of professional knowledge. It's bad form to argue with the professionals, even when based on your own experiences if those are ...lets say rare events. If you stick around you'll discover which posters are from a particular profession. 

Forgive me, OP, for further derailing your thread.