Stephen Greenhalgh is the housing minister who will take over responsibility for leasehold reform, as well as continue with his work on building safety.
With various landlord and tenant legal experts damning the Building Safety Bill variously as “a car crash” and “a dog’s dinner”, leaseholders might be forgiven for wondering whether this is particularly good news.
But it is, as Lord Greenhalgh is rather less political than the appointments in the Commons and he does have a pretty good knowledge of this sector having been involved in housing since Boris Johnson was mayor of London. Nor can the Building Safety Bill be laid at his door; it goes higher up the food chain.
LKP has had numerous meetings with Lord Greenhalgh thanks to video conferencing; rather more than we have had with any previous housing ministers.
So it is good news for leaseholders that we are not having to start all over again and try to tutor an elected shire Tory into the iniquities of English leasehold law which predominantly affects cities.
The Building Safety Bill has serious implications for leaseholders, as will be made clear. Indeed, the cladding scandal has caused the biggest crisis for the leasehold sector in a generation. It dwarfs the doubling ground rent scandal, where the Competition and Markets Authority announced enforcement action last month.
The cladding scandal will become ever more pressing in the autumn and the winter as the costs mount for the leaseholders affected and 10,000s of young first time buyers face uncertain employment.
Aside from the disaster, we now have the issues of:
- the repeated government promise to set new ground rents to zero and ban leasehold houses;
- the government action in response to the Law Commission leasehold reform proposals;
- the long outstanding Law Commission reform of leasehold law’s unjustifiable forfeiture laws;
- the Law Commission’s repeated requests to carry out a systemic study of leasehold laws and reform the lot. This wish is repeated in the introductions of all its law reform reports.
So it is good that we have a minister in charge who a/ understands this stuff; b/ doesn’t appear to be beguiled by the lobby that cheers on our greedy, inept and hugely subsidised house building sector.
So, welcome to the not entirely harmonious world of leasehold, Lord Greehalgh.
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We had to move quickly into a chain free new build and this would be our first home with mortgage.The home was built by Ansar homes and the sale was rushed through in 3wks using a conveyancer they use.Nothing was explained about leasehold other than the annual payment.The builder had offered us the option of large second lounge or double garage and we opted for the extra room. This required to be attached to the main building but he took our money and soon after declared bankruptcy.We had to both work fulltime for years to fund the joining together of the property.Meantime unknown to us the land agent who collects the ground rent had changed the name to Ancer Investments and offered a letter to everyone to buy the leasehold for £700.We only found out many years later that he had also sold off the estate.He informed us last year that he had forgotten to send us the offer of leasehold at £700 and that he had also forgotten to sell off our house with the rest of estate.We asked could we buy the leasehold as we have made big improvements to our property.He shocked us by saying,get a valuation at today’s prices and we will talk.He was secretary for Ansar and now Director for Ancer.Can we be treated this way?
My advice is to do a lot of research into Ansar. Endole is a good free site for company information. If you have neighbours in the same situation get them all together. See what paperwork they have and start to build a story of what happened over the years. We are in the process of doing this with some common ground we have around our development and pay for the upkeep. We set up an RMC, bought the freehold and now are in the situation of trying to get rid of the names of the stakeholders on our deeds who supposedly ‘manage’ it. What we have found is that these companies want something for nothing and are often very badly run. They only see the situation from their perspective. If you get your act together you may well find they have messed up in several areas which will give you a lever against them. Also, find a solicitor that knows about property, This is harder than it looks. Most are happy to take your money, but do not understand the intricacies and ways to get out of these arrangements. One of the reasons these companies get away with what they do is they do not come up against a united group of people with a solid case. People get too emotional and start trading insults. Stick to the facts and build your case. You can win!
Lord Greenhalgh’s appointment is very welcome news to all those waiting on leasehold reform. He has already stated that “unscrupulous freeholders” should be made “pariahs” after the pandemic”.
If I understand Irene’s comment above correctly, it seems she has been denied Right of First Refusal @ £700 on her house.
Breach of Right of First Refusal in the sale of residential Flats is a criminal offence (part 1, LTA 1987, as amended Housing Act 1996). Until such time as the responsible freeholder (the illegal title purchaser) issues a section 3A Notice to all the qualifying leaseholders in affected premises, informing them of their right to purchase the freehold “on like terms” to the original and relevant disposal, the majority qualifying leaseholders continue to hold the right to buy the freehold “on like terms.”, – and do so without time limit until a s3A Notice is finally issued.
The illegal sale of freehold titles to residential flats continues to be a major national scandal. I trust that as Lord Greenhalgh unveils his proposals for reform, to include the right to buy the freehold of residential flats “easier and cheaper” (and Irene’s house), he will take full account of this branch of an “unscrupulous” industry. And direct that where such illegal purchases have been made in the past, the “unscrupulous” must immediately remedy this by making “like term” offers to the qualifying leaseholders – be it house or flat.
The freeholder doesn’t have to offer the leaseholders the right of first refusal for leasehold houses. If the OP was offered a double garage I’d assume it was a house and not a flat.
We tried to buy the freehold of our house some years after Miller Homes sold it to Wallace Estates, we weren’t even told about it which is bizarre in my opinion as our original lease is with Miller Homes.
The agent whom collects ground rent on behalf of Wallace Estates – SIMARC (whom incidentally is just a subsidiary of W.Estates) – quoted us 100% over the actual value. We were prepared to pay £3K but they wanted £6K. I attempted to liase with SIMARC and tried to get them to be reasonable but unfortunately to no avail so I have not bothered going any further with it, which is a shame as we had wanted to do some improvement works on it and convert the garage into a liveable ensuite bedroom, now we can’t without permission and fees to SIMARC!! Scandalous! Especially when your conveyancer doesn’t even inform you of any of this by highlighting any of these issues or any in the lease etc. This is what happens when you allow self-regulation by successive governments, Scandalous!
I hope Lord Greenhalgh reads these comments and sees that there are many injustices due to the leasehold sector not being properly regulated.
I invite Lord Greenhalgh to see just what ordinary residential leaseholders have to put up with even though there is supposed to be a ‘Pledge’ from freeholders to stop making things difficult for their customers, this ‘Pledge’ means nothing to many of them and they are still carrying on as they always have, ie, make communication difficult, expensive and time wasting.
I would ask Lord Greenhalgh to visit the Trustpilots website feedback for Estates & Management and see for himself what responses leaseholders have given.
I hope the noble Lord will see that there are some freeholding companies that cannot be trusted with ‘Pledges’ and legislation is badly needed to stop what can only be described as ‘Legalised crime’.
Leaseholders have been waiting a long time for reform and I can understand that leasehold law is very complicated in all probability due to freeholders and landowners having a degree of coercion with Parliamentary decisions over many years so as to make the whole process of reversing the Laws preferencial treatment for Freeholding companies very difficult indeed.
I understand that there is now a concerted effort by Freehold managing agents to lobby those in Parliamentary authority in order to keep their hold on the income streams they have enjoyed over many years which were set up for the sole purpose of extracting as much as possible from ordinary working people.
I hope the noble Lord will realise that in these times of technoligical advancement there is not much that is hidden away from the public eye and that even if the hoped for Leasehold Reform is watered down for the benefit of Freeholding comanies, there will still be many people who will campaign for the same freedoms which all other countries in the civilised world take for granted.
Tony 20/10/20