Ben

CEng, Net Zero. Justice for #leaseholders battling @mhclg (regulatory failure) and construction industry (rogue) #BuildingSafetyCrisis

[Ben @claddingfiasco]

Yesterday my partner completed the last placement of her adult nursing degree. She was recently nominated for the British Journal of Nursing awards, a testament to how hard she has worked over the three years since she moved to the UK, following my job.

[Northern Monkey @LiberalElitist2]

Trinity Estates have just raised our SC by over £400pa, taking the cost to nearly £4000pa in a flat worth less than £100k. This is more than 15% of my pre tax salary. Without urgent action we will lose our home this year @mtpennycook @SteveReedMP

[Leasehold Hostage @endleaseholduk]

@moving_charlie Existing leaseholders also trapped. Service charges at our @ballymore development in zone 5 west London for a 1 bed are circa £8k and for a 2 bed are circa £10.5k this year. Everyone is desperate to sell and escape but no one is buying an unlimited leasehold debt liability.

[Lawrence Hunt @huntmj28]

I’ve taken my flat off the market. It was on for 25k less than what we paid in 2014. No one was even clicking on the listing. The only flat which has sold in my building went for a £60k loss and it took a year to complete.

[End Our Cladding Scandal @EOCS_Official]

@SamanthaDixonMP @mtpennycook Thanks Minister Dixon.

Good to see that this action, brought by @michaelgove in March 2024, has succeeded.

It's unclear whether the thousands of pounds paid out by leaseholders at Hallings Wharf (see below) were also recovered. Please can you confirm?

[Manchester Cladiators @McrCladiators]

@EOCS_Official @SamanthaDixonMP @mtpennycook @michaelgove Unlikely. Sadly, Labour's focus seems to be on protecting the taxpayer, then industry and then maybe leaseholders.

Nothing has changed.

[Sophie @SophieLB1]

Unfortunately this just isn't happening. My building was one of the first to have an RO. Yet we are still trapped as @railpen keep £200k charges on our accounts. You may have a remediated building and yet STILL be unable to move

[Ben @claddingfiasco]

@CHinchliffMP @HorNet_Group Rip off service charges:

1) freeholder greed e.g. £120 for single bulb replacement

2) shoddy construction practices e.g. pipes that leak after 2 years of service (endemic) fire doors that need rehanging after 2 years of service.

How do you protect leaseholders from 2) ?

[Ben @claddingfiasco]

@SophieLB1 @glazersleavenow @DaveAirCEO @mhclg @railpen @SophieLB1 we are in the same position they haven’t finalised the last 4 years’ service charge accounts. I have thought about demanding with Section 21, but it’s unclear whether that would then trigger a demand for the balance on leaseholder accounts, in my case ca £80k.

[Sophie @SophieLB1]

A horrible anniversary of the worst decision I've ever made #endourcladdingscandal

[End Our Cladding Scandal @EOCS_Official]

🗨️ "Being trapped is not necessarily just a physical thing. There's a financial entrapment, there's a mental entrapment, there's an emotional entrapment to this. I am absolutely furious about it."

https://t.co/d5BPntR5Nl

[Sophie @SophieLB1]

9 years ago I put my trust in the housing market. I piled my life savings into a home. 1 month after completion Grenfell happened. 3 years later I would be sent a bill for £208k to fix historic fire safety defects and 6 years after that I am still unable to sell or move on.

[UK House of Commons Committees @HoCcommitteesUK]

52% are struggling to afford service charges. 39% cannot sell or remortgage due to high service charges. The scale of the problem is clear.

5/6 🧵

[UK House of Commons Committees @HoCcommitteesUK]

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee surveyed 7,358 homeowners on the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill and the findings are stark.

Our full report will be published tomorrow.
Watch this space.

1/6 🧵

[Moving Home with Charlie @moving_charlie]

One of the best summaries of how this government thinks and works:

1. Make bold election promise.
2. U-turn on promise.
3. Offer insulting alternative and think it's ok.

[James Creedy @jcreedy]

@mtpennycook Maybe promising to end leasehold, and then saying that you can't end leasehold, rubbed a few people up the wrong way, Matthew.

[David Parker @David_ParkerUK]

@YvetteCooperMP Have a chat with @mtpennycook and ask him why a key manifesto promise to end leasehold for 10 million voters is now not being delivered. Lack of leasehold prioritisation has trapped people in unsellable property and has stalled the housing market. Leaseholders have spoken today

[UK Cladding Action Group @ukcag]

.@SteveReedMP that's what we were telling you to do ever since you became the Housing Secretary.
But you refused to listen, put on a silly hat & backed rogue builders while ignoring their innocent #leaseholder victims.
You reap what you sow. #BuildingSafetyCrisis

[Liam Spender @LiamSpender]

The case for leasehold in this article is wrong and predicated on false premises.

1/ leases of new flats or houses are not sold at a “substantial discount” to reflect the fact that they are leasehold and carry ground rents.

The ground rent is neither legally nor commercially necessary. Ground rent as part of the price / consideration for the grant is not legally necessary because the leases are made by deed and require no consideration.

The ground rent is not a term of the lease any purchaser can negotiate. The same is true of many other terms in leases. It is common to see flats of identical configuration, if not next door to each other, sold for materially different premiums but with the same ground rent.

Indeed, in virtually all cases the developer will have agreed to sell the ground rent income before the first flat is built and cannot negotiate even if the flat buyer offers a higher premium for no ground rent.

Nor is it uncommon or unusual to see leases that prescribe the ground rent by factors that have nothing to do with the premium paid, for example by the number of bedrooms.

Further, when the Competition and Markets Authority investigated leasehold in 2015 it could find no evidence that new houses were sold for less than freehold houses. And where is the constant against which to compare flats because they are generally never sold as freehold?

2/ buying a leasehold flat or house is not the same as buying a sofa on instalments. If a sofa is bought on hire purchase then the buyer owns it outright at the end after making all payments. Not true for a leasehold flat or house, which goes back to the freeholder at the end of the term even after all payments are made. Indeed, modern leases also require the leaseholders to pay all the upkeep and for improvement of the building.

3/ a lease is not a right to occupy. That would be a rental tenancy. A long leasehold is an estate in land carrying the right of exclusive possession for the term. It is this right that makes it saleable and mortgageable.

4/ the myth that leaseholders are incapable of running estates or building places is to be contrasted by experience of right to manage and resident management companies, including at very large sites. Walk round New York or Paris or any other major city and you will see neighbourhoods full of communally owned and managed buildings. It is quintessentially feudal to say the British are too stupid to manage their own buildings without a third party freeholder.

5/ leasehold is not and has never been designed for multi occupancy blocks of flats. It was all that was available at the time large numbers of flats began to be built to ensure that positive covenants could be legally enforceable as owners changed and in multi-storey blocks. Other common law countries (Australia, Canada to name but two) saw the flaws in leasehold and developed a bespoke legal model. That is what Commonhold seeks to achieve for England.

6/ the fundamental flaw in leasehold, which cannot be fixed, is that it creates an adversarial relationship and a principal-agent problem between freeholders and leaseholders. The freeholder has all the power and no responsibility. More than 50 years of Parliament attempting to regulate service charges demonstrates this problem is inherent, a feature not a bug.

7/ as to freeholders’ property being expropriated without market value under the 2024 Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 this is wrong and the Divisional Court said so last October. We shall see if the Court of Appeal agrees.

In any event, the loss of the freeholders’ right to 50% of marriage value when leases below 80 years are extended is unjustifiable in market terms. The freeholder gives nothing in exchange, keeps his freehold interest and is compensated for the loss of ground rent. Ending marriage value stops freeholders extracting ransom from a lease extension or freehold purchase.

[Rituparna @ritustweets]

This guy talks about "orderly exit". Our lives have been thrown into disorder, chaos,limbo &horror over the last 10 yrs & beyond. Instead of using their supermajority for good,@mtpennycook sucks up to freeholders & crooked developers. Let's gets these charlatans exited from govt.

[Free Leaseholders @FreeLeasehlders]

@mtpennycook @instituteforgov No one expected overnight, Matthew.

But where are the deeds, not words?

The 2024 Act is left rusting:

You can activate NOW its clauses for 990-year lease extensions and lifting 25% to 50% non-resi premises limit for leaseholders to buy their freeholds in mixed-use blocks.