Taylor Wimpey has rejected any responsibility to purchasers of resold Taylor Wimpey properties that have doubling ground rents.
Such buyers can deal with the investment company directly to buy the freehold title, and take up any issues with their conveyancing solicitors.
Pete Redfern has responded to a homebuyer who bought a Taylor Wimpey property from the original owners.
His reply reads:
Having looked into the background, we note that you did not purchase your property directly from Taylor Wimpey. As a result, we are not able to comment on the sales process or the information that was made available to you at the time of your purchase.
In terms of the lease documentation, the rent review provisions are worded simply and clearly in the lease and are contained prominently in the first clause under the rent review heading.
We would expect all solicitors to explain both the leasehold nature of a property and the terms of any rent reviews to their clients, along with any other key terms of the lease. If you have any concerns about the legal advice you received when you purchased your property, we would suggest that you speak to the conveyancing solicitor you used for the transaction, in order to discuss this.
If you have concerns about the price the current freeholder is quoting, or their approach, we recommend that you discuss your concerns, and what options might be available to you with regard to your lease, with them directly. You may also wish to consider seeking professional advice on the valuation.
Regards,
Pete Redfern
Related posts:
Taylor Wimpey CEO says doubling ground rent scandal under ‘review’. But Bottomley asks: ‘Have innocent homebuyers been shafted?’
Leaked Taylor Wimpey document showing doubling ground sales TODAY is “an oversight”
BBC R4 You and Yours exposes Taylor Wimpey buyers facing doubled ground rents to £500 before 10 years have passed
Taylor Wimpey CEO to meet MPs over ‘cancer’ of doubling ground rents (which were deterring astute buyers in 2007!)
Taylor Wimpey ‘stretches credulity’ by refusing to list properties sold with doubling ground rents
Linden Homes calls in libel lawyers to silence customer who spoke to BBC
How dare you try and wash your hands of this. You wrote the leases you originally sold the houses on these terms, you are 100% to blame .You have created this mess for resales too , this horrific mess for thousands of homeowners . New or resales
What are you trying to say here , independent solicitors should have realised the implications of these onerous clauses when the solicitors you recommended did not ?
I agree with with Mr Redfern CEO, Taylor Wimpey.
Solicitors (including the ones on your panel) should have pointed out that your company had artificially created an asset which could be sold off by your company, the consequence being that a property your customers purchased has become unsalable and by that has lost the purchaser value in their home.
All the solicitors involved should have advised their clients that a very expensive trap had been set by Taylor Wimpey as part of a lease that should never have been a lease.
Had those solicitors been acting in a competent, professional manner on behalf of their clients they would have advised potential purchasers not to purchase a leasehold Taylor Wimpey home,
Mr Redfern is guilty of making a big mistake, ironically the same mistake others have made when something a company had done is fundamentally wrong.
The pattern they and Mr Redfern appear to follow, is Deny, Delay, Deflect.
The thing is, it never works. it is doomed to failure.
I wonder what the percentage of reduced house sales it will take before shareholders and financial institutes begin to get nervous?
The sale of leasehold houses,,”informal” lease extensions on residential flats, and the criminal denial of right of first refusal when freehold titles of residential flat estates change hands, exemplifies the depths to which certain members of the legal profession have sunk in aiding and abetting an unregulated industry that has fallen prey to an unscrupulous hardcore of spivs, gangsters, and avaricious bandwagon jumpers.
Besides reminding public servants (including the Housing Minister) of the mandatory requirement to uphold the rule of statute law to the letter, it is also now time to put specific law firms on notice that their misrepresentations to lessees have been exposed., and nothing less than full compensation will be required by all those who have suffered as a consequence of what Justin Madders MP has rightly called a PPI style national scandal.
Putting named solicitors and their firms on notice will oblige the latter in turn to notify their respective Indemnity Insurance providers of the certainty and imminence of major claims. And they won’t like that!
Of course if the sharp practices of leasehold tenure is stopped, there will be some losers, particularly the freeholding/connected managing agent companies often financed by off shore asset management companies or banks.that lent funds against grossly over valued assets believing their investment was a one way bet.
I would ask MP’s to consider another factor?
Suppose, leaseholders were no longer scammed for thousands of pounds? Suppose the equity of a property was not diminished by the term left on a lease?
Suppose thousands of pounds did not have to be spent extending a lease or leaseholders did not have to face the prospect of paying up to 9,600 pounds per year for ground rent?
That would mean that leaseholders retained their cash rather than it ending up in a non tax paying offshore account. And that means those leaseholders would have all that extra money to spend in their community, which would provide a major boost to the economy and drive an increase in UK tax revenue.
This is really disappointing. If Mr Redfern does indeed offer a solution to the doubling clause issue, but to original purchasers only, where will this leave the resale buyers? We were left just as much in the dark and if their own recommended solicitors didn’t pick up on these onerous clauses, how can they expect other independent ones to?
Jessica L,
The great thing about sites such as LKP is that all those involved have never looked at mere self interest. Instead we are united in our quest to end the scandal of leasehold that has thus far allowed greedy companies to,exploit leaseholders.
So don’t worry, those that are suffering because they bought a leasehold home from the original owner, are part and parcel of the campaign and always will be..
No one associated with this fight for justice will ever abandon you.
Nice to hear Michael
That’s very reassuring. Thank you Michael. Interested to hear Sebastian’s thoughts on this also?
Try not to worry Jessica. Michael Es comments/advice are always well respected, correct and well supported.
Basically we have two areas here.
1. People who already have properties with disgraceful onerous leases.
2. To ensure that the sale of these New Age leases is stopped with utmost urgency.
The longer these sales are allowed to go on the more after mess will be left to clear up as per point 1.
I do not have a leasehold flat/house but I have learnt so much about leasehold over the years I will not give up my time trying to help people caught in these unacceptable situations..
I care, clearly none of these companies who have thought up these leases don’t..
I have been trying to get a grasp of how much money we are talking about to buy back all these freeholds. From all the different Developers.
Let’s assume the following facts apply.
1 The Government has stated that in 2015, 5000 leasehold houses were built.
2 Assume that this current Ground Rent problem started in 2007.
3 So it’s been going 10 years.
4 The original cost of the Freehold to the purchasers was around the £3000 to £5000 mark but not many were given the opportunity to purchase and were sold onto finance companies.
5 The average cost of purchasing now from these finance companies appears to be anything between around £10000 and £40000 depending whether they are Doublers or RPI. Let’s assume an average cost of £25000 less the original £5000=£20000
So based on the above we are talking about 50000 houses total at an average cost of £20000 to buy back the freeholds.
50000 x £20000 = £1 000 000 000. ( £1 Billion )
That’s a lot of dosh, does that amount exist.
Just moving on from my estimated cost of £1 billion to solve this Ground Rent problem. (see previous comment).
Assume that the TW share of this market is around 10%. Based on around 15000 TW completed properties out of an overall annual completion of around 150000.
So the TW share of the £1 Billion cost would be £100 Million.
The gross annual profit they have declared today is £733 Million. Subject to tax.
So it means it would take around 15% of this gross profit to solve the TW Ground Rent problem.
So how about the Government giving some tax relief on this gross profit, the Shareholders donating some of their dividend, and TW forfeiting some of their profit.. It would not take much to arrive at £100 Million.
Apply this same solution to the other Developers ( who all seem to have had a profitable year), and the problem is solved, saving months of anxiety for leaseholders and probably hundreds of thousands spent on legal fees.
And this whole issue can be put to bed now.
MH, you also need to ADD IN the profit they have also made by selling all the freeholds to investors
MH, if you are somewhere near correct, of course that sort of amount exists. Between all the builders involved with these onerous leases, and that seems to be all of the mainstream builders in England, then 1 billion between all of them is peanuts.
The shareholders and directors will just have to accept that sometimes their scams (sorry, investments) do not give them any bonuses/ profit for a while.
This selling of houses leasehold seems the next best thing to printing your own money..
Sell the building only, hang onto the land and get a friendly estate agent and solicitor to complete the sale. And include a few clauses in the lease to bring in a regular income. Like Ground Rent, fees for alterations and what about exit/transfer fees. And then there are the mighty fees for extending the lease when it runs down.
Or alternatively sell the freehold to one of the finance companies who are clambering for this type of income.
Is there any chance of me as an individual doing this when selling my own freehold house. Could I convert it to leasehold and write out my own lease full of income streams. And then sell the freehold on without informing the purchaser.
I would not dream of doing this, but just wonder if it is possible.
I guess you could convert your house into flats and sell them on as leasehold with onerous ground rent and weird leases. I could even give you some inside tips to prevent the poor (fictional, I hope) buyers/leaseholders of ever forming an RTM or enfranchising.
Then you could set up a management company (register everything off shore if at all possible, and remember no-one needs any qualifications to become a managing agent, just pick a random person from the street and appoint them) to collect management/service charges.
Of course you would want to do this anonymously, so best to enlist the help of a friendly solicitor to keep a decent amount of distance between the freeholder and he scam.
I am afraid that the law, as it currently stands makes it quite possible to do all the above.
Michael,
Absolutely nothing would stop you from doing this. remember, If you converted your house into flats this would be seen as normal practice.
Now if at the same time you turned the property into a leasehold with with onerous terms with you as the freeholder deriving income from it, you would have created an artificial asset, for which if you had invited your friendly bank manager to party on a yacht with hospitality provided by ladies seeking a short term relationship that could be paid for in advance, you never know? The friendly bank manager might even advance you a loan against the asset value of the lease?
And of course, all you need to do is to engineer a situation in which the unfortunate leaseholder ends up repaying the freeholder’s loan!.
Exactly! please see my answer above. There is already a huge shortage of housing, unless the law is reformed this will become more and more widespread. It is legal, there is nothing to stop greedy people from doing it. And lets face facts here, who can resist free money?
ME/M H/Leaseholder
Noted comments above and elsewhere on LKP re Off-Shore companies..and pose following:
When is an Associate Company (or Subsidiary) NOT an Associated Company (or Subsidiary) ?
Does an off-shore subsidiary remain a subsidiary within the meaning of appropriate sections of the Companies Act when it charges its shares to a Bank or other financial institution in England?
In the event a UK financial institution holds a registered charge, and thereby controls, the subsidiary, it should be permissible for leaseholders to hold the UK financial institution liable for wrongdoing.
Now apply this to misrepresentation in the sale of leasehold houses,, “informal” lease extensions instead of 90 year statutory extensions, and relevant disposal of under 80 yr portfolios without leaseholder knowledge, and perhaps we can focus our sights more close to home.
Welcome your views.
Alec
A company having a charge or a debenture over a company’s assets does not mean the own the assets, merely that in the event of a default in the terms of the loan secured against the assets they have first call on those assets and can seize them ,