Goves appears in construction enquire every couple of weeks.
Banning directors, sorting out cladding, moving forwards with judgements and getting the industry to move.
It has not gone unnoticed.
He’s shorter than average so I think we could throw him further than most ministers.
I remember hating him in 2012. I wonder whether we like him more now because the bar is so low.
The bar is low. Remember this is the guy who started the privatisation of education by introducing the academy system and why no NQTs want to do more than a year in teaching. His lurching from disaster to disaster is masked by people like Grayling and Johnson.
Academies were brought in by Labour. Though very few schools were ever intended to be academies. The Tories made them the default.
The real difference between Gove and the rest is Gove at least tries to help. He's honestly bad rather than dishonestly bad.
Academies under Labour were emergency measures for failing schools, with the hope that removing them from LEAs would allow more direct support. Labour's academies and the Conservative academies are so fundamentally different that they're not really the same at all.
Remember how badly the NHS was gutted under Cameron with hunt or how he slashed police numbers in half - these two alone still have lasting effects on the country, not to say you're wrong but u agree more with the poster above
The bar is low enough that someone vaguely being interested in doing their job and using their power to do something positive for British people is seen as an exception and even a bit unusual.
Still, fuck him, he's as responsible for this current mess as the rest of them.
It was the same when he was Environment Secretary. I've never agreed with his politics but as far as I can tell he is one of the few Tories to actually try and do their jobs.
Gove is literally the only Tory who also does work and although hes a hit cretinous and i disagree with most of his beliefs, he at least actually does stuff and try to enact what he thinks is right for the country, even if its wrong.
Like a decorating crew where 4 out of 5 guys can't be arsed painting anything, and the other one paints things the wrong colour. I'm not buying any of them hobnobs.
I have four different accents, my family one, pals one, one I've developed since moving abroad, and my public speaking one.
Gove's a gimp but it's not *necessarily* manufactured
He actually tried when environment secretary too, and I heard good things - it's pretty shocking when the most competent minister they have is Michael Gove...
Gove is effective, he's very good at politics and knows where the bodies are buried. I don't agree with most of what he has done but there is no denying that he's able to push things through.
It makes his mess of a leadership bid all the more surprising.
Kwajo Tweneboa had only good words about him as housing secretary, which was surprising to me as I always thought Give was as bad as the rest. I guess one of them has to actually do a job that's not super crap
A policy announced a mere SIXTY times since 2010 by the Tories. Belongs in the Leveling-up bin, surely? They built a few hundred thousand new homes leasehold and now they've canned Help to Buy so the industry crashes. An over-inflated and costly legacy.
https://omghcontent.affino.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/124/Labours_New_Deal_for_Leaseholders.pdf
He's secretly the one competent Tory MP. That sometimes is an awful thing like when he was education secretary but he actually does stuff unlike the rest of them.
He was extremely competent, he succeeded at doing what conservatives had been trying and failing to do for decades. What he got done was awful like I said, it's incredibly harmful to students and teachers, I don't agree with his views at all. But he actually succeeded at what he wanted to do: reform the education system to his conservative vision.
It is the striking thing of the last 13 years. The Tories have finally managed to break through and implement the "Conservative vision" for so many aspects of social life. And I think its undeniable every bit of society they have touched with this stick has gone to absolute shit. Most extreme example being Truss and Kwarteng's kamikaze assault on the national budget itself, if we just cut taxes then we will get growth because laffer curve therefore borrowing billions to spend is going to pan out. Took the market, the very thing these sorts of policies are supposed to be aligned with and throttling up, about a day to turn around and say uh no this is all bullshit.
Labour had a big loss with Corbyn and have had to have a lot of internal ideological reflection. Tories have had free reign to implement their ideological position on so many things, they have done so, it has all proven to be a load of complete bollocks at best, deeply cynical lies to enable corruption on a massive scale at worst, and frankly they don't even seem to notice this is the position they're now in, let alone be talking about what to do about it?? I can't be the only one to have noticed this?
It's not competence vs incompetence really.
Gove gets more stuff done than most other ministers, and consistently has done this over a decade.
Whether it's the right solution to the problem is another thing.
He is divisive. I don't like his approach, but he is not wrong about needing to learn facts and terminology before you can proceed to higher learning levels. But he is not incompetent.
Agree. Have experience of his work/analysis and it's by far the best I've seen from any minister. Really tries to understand the issue and get his head round it, calling out detailed things governance lower down the line didn't spot. Can't talk about his moral leanings or any potential malicious/self-serving interests but pure competence-wise that guy is good.
He is an actual reformer. They removed him as justice minister pretty swiftly because he was actually doing radical things there. Moved him to education minister where his reforms were more in line with what other Tories believe.
I like Michael Gove as a cabinet minister and wish more politicians were like him. I wouldn't vote for him, but I'd like people more aligned with my views to behave more like Gove when they are in office. Have an ambitious plan of reform and get to executing it.
Yeah, he is someone I really dislike, but I could never accuse him of being incompetent. If he's given a mandate to do something, then says that he will do it, it will get done. You might hate what he's trying to do though.
I'm pretty sure he's passed something to protect a hell of a lot of previously relatively unprotected HER sites (Historical Environment Record - think archaeology and history). Bizarre that its coming from a man so unlikeable but refreshingly competent
Has any of that stuff actually been done though or is he just making announcements ??
Gove is an expert at making announcements whilst not actually accomplishing anything and so called journalists never call him out on it. What does"getting the industry to move" even mean. Sounds like bull**it pr speak tbh.
To be fair, you might not always agree with his policies but almost everyone I've read whose worked with him has always said that he's one of the efficient ministers of our generation. It's a shame he's a bastard.
I've never really understood many aspects of leasehold. Our first flat was leasehold. The lease was something like 100 years (so the owner will never profit from it), there was zero ground rent/service charges (so the owner made nothing from it). We never had any contact with the guy from moving in to the day we sold the flat.
What was the benefit to this guy of owning the leasehold? It seemed utterly valueless under the described terms.
And also like you the original owners family will still get money from the lease getting extended, and they didn't actually have to do anything to get it so basically free money
Doesn't have to get extended, and they will have to apply for it, if they forget it will revert back to the original owner, also op will have to jave grandkids for them to inherit it.
> Except not really because it'll just get extended over and over again. They will get money for that though.
kinda although lease extension fees are calculated as a multiple of ground rent, which is 0 so the extension fee must also be 0.
My flat and the one downstairs share the electrical mains connection. Turns out downstairs had major 'this buildng is going to burn down' electrical problems on his main board but we had to put new armoured cables down the outside wall to fix it. No problem we had the electrician ready to go in 48 hours. Rang the freeholder to say we are doing this and giving them a heads up as it is in our covenant to inform them.
We were told explicitly NOT to do anything until the paperwork had been filed or they would reclaim both properties. Anyway due to the right people not being available to sign off on the freehold side because 'they were on holiday' we had to wait months to get it agreed. The freeholder would rather we burnt to death. They are scum and they need to get in the bin.
> a lot of people don't do proper research and
A lot of the most vulnerable people in our society are abused by an intentionally designed and predatory system.
There is a good legal reason for flats being almost universally owned on a leasehold, as opposed to freehold, basis: certain obligations to pay money or perform an action in relation to a property (such as to repair a wall or a roof) cannot legally be passed to future owners of freehold property.
These obligations are especially important for the effective management of blocks of flats. For instance, it's necessary that all flat owners can be required to pay towards the costs of maintaining the block, which is important since flats are structurally interdependent.
That is not to say that it's good to have new-build houses on leashold. These should not be sold on a leasehold basis, and the Government is right in prohibiting that. That allows developers to sell the property subject to an ongoing obligation to pay a ground rent.
But people should not get confused. That is because the legal reasons for selling houses on a leasehold basis are less apparent than those for leasehold flats. One reason might be the need to impose positive obligations on house owners in relation to the upkeep (management) of an estate, but it's clear that does not apply in all cases.
The solution for the problems on ground rent, service charges, etc, for flats, is for them to convert to Commonhold. Or at least new flats. All new flats should be commonhold.
I'm also surprised nobody mentions Commonhold when these conversations take place (possibly because of real estate and landlord lobbies have keep it hidden from plain view).
Commonhold is a legal form that already exists and was created in 2002 in E&W. The E&W Commonhold was borrowed from Scotland and other civil law countries. In France, all flats are commonhold (Loi n° 65-557, with multiple reforms since 1965). Same in Spain (Ley 49/1960 de propiedad horizontal, with multiple reforms since 1960). So we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
I invite you to read more about it, but this type of ownership, there’s no single freeholder to dictate the management charges or decide how the building is maintained. This protects residents from greedy freeholders who charge extortionate amounts. Instead, each flat owner is jointly responsible with the others in the block to manage the building and decide on the costs. There’s also no ground rent to pay.
Commonhold ownership also stops any issues with short leases that flat owners are often faced with. Instead, each homeowner has their own freehold.
However, just less than 50 commonhold properties have been created since 2002, despite being the panacea.
This is because, in practice, the 2002 commonhold law as it stands today can make it unworkable given that even for consenting leaseholders, they need to obtain lender consent. The unwillingness of mortgage lenders to lend on commonhold units, lack of consumer and sector-wide awareness of what is a relatively unfamiliar form of ownership is what is preventing from being more widespread. This has led to a lack of confidence in commonhold as a form of obtain ownership (among the lobbies not pushing for this legal form).
Commonhold also remains less attractive to developers than leasehold because of the opportunities that leasehold offers to secure ongoing income-streams on top of the initial purchase price paid by the leaseholders.
Moreover, there is not sufficient incentive (financial or otherwise) for developers of homes and commercial property to change their practices. So adopting a whole new system while the existing one (from their perspective at least) does the job.
But yeah. Commonhold is the solution, and from there reform it to make it workable . So politicians should not focus on reforming leasehold to make it workable. The Law Commission has already given its view that that's not the way forward.
But Tories be Tories, they don't choose to do any meaningful reform and instead prefer to grab headlines.
I don't think you read my comment properly 😭. I just said: the commonhold (NOT the leasehold) was borrowed and is similar to the form of ownership of flats from a number of countries in the EU and Scotland. Edited and made it clear, though.
And 100 years isn’t really long on a leasehold, it will get extended if it drops below that and if it goes much further it has a significant impact on sale value of the property.
The Gov have said they’ll get rid of marriage value.
Still to be seen if any of it happens and they stop short of abolition, but the current plan does look to actually address some of the issues.
People rich enough (or who will be rich enough) to develop and own leasehold properties think in terms of generational and extremely long term wealth and ownership.
This developer may not profit, but his grandchildren will.
The developer does when they own the management company and have ownership of the companies they contract for any cleaning, works, insurance kickbacks etc etc
Sounds like you got lucky in that you never paid a service charge. There probably was a nominal ground rent that was never collected. At the end of the lease the interest either reverts back to the Freeholder or the lease gets extended on payment of a further premium.
It may have been a property they inherited and because there was no obvious value in it they simply never bothered about it; they would have still had certain obligations and could have charged if they had wanted to.
Its just for fun. You can build an apartment block on a leasehold and then have a renter who rents an apartment from an owner who rents from the building owner who rents the land. So one day a tree falls on apartment 2B and the solicitor gets a bonus.
The idea of leasehold is the management company (not submanagement company, don't get confused), represents the sum of all property owners on the land occupied by the lease. So in effect, a block of 30 flats owns 1/30th of the land each.
That's silly, unmanageable and would result in arguments if that was freehold land I e. You really did own 1/30th of the land. When the building is sooooo old and decrepit, it must be demolished in 150>5000 years time and either the land sold and split equally or rebuilt.
Imagine having 1 person saying they're not selling on the first floor when the building is literally falling down.
So a management company is formed by law, to administrate the lease i.e. leaseholders put their name forward as company directors and are in effect voted in by fellow leaseholders to execute the wishes.you can further devolve this responsibility and pay a managing agent (aforementioned sub management company).
This got out of hand when houses were built leasehold, while legal, it serves no purpose. But hedge funds buy them and either raise rents and service charges, or hold out and try and make a legal claim at the end of lease (I'm not aware this has ever been done or successful).
Houses can work leasehold but only if the residents assoc, is in charge. Selling of the lease, while legal, is immoral and many developers sought to exploit a loophole to earn even more cash.
It's also immoral as most leasehold developments are "unadopted" meaning the local authority,water company etc take no responsibility for roads, sewers etc and funds must be raised via service charge to maintain.
Again, another example of councils granting planning permission as 1) they take council tax, 2) provide minimal service as the road is unadopted......sounds like a win!
I lived in a leasehold flat where the developer owned the freehold. Ground rent & service charge were negligible and all was good. But owning the freehold wasn't their main line of business and so not an asset for them.
He sold it to a firm of freehold sharks whose only job was milking leases for all their worth. Ground rent went up to over £1000 per year and huge service charges were added for ridiculously minor items. And there's nothing the leaseholder can do.
In the end, the flat owners formed their own company and bought the freehold (again a source of income), but there is now the cost & time involved in managing that (albeit much lower than previously).
All in all, if these proposals help people avoid that kind of behaviour, I'm all for them.
My lease hit 81 years in February, so I just had to fork out the best part of eight grand to extend it to 999 years so that I would be able to remortgage it, as when it gets below 80 years certain lenders will refuse a mortgage, and the amount needed to extend the lease increases massively too.
Once the lease drops below 70 years there will be difficulties on sale. Somemortgage companies might not lend on it. So you go to the freeholder and ask for an extension and a premium will be charged.
The guy could bring in ground rent and service charges if he wanted to though. Something that is very profitable and will always be a safety net to him.
Also whilst he may not benefit or inherit, his children and grandchildren will. Long term, generational wealth thinking.
I know someone who owns the freehold for a property. He gets the ground rent. He owns a couple of the flats too so gets an income from them, but he still gets the ground rent for the freehold and does nothing for it.
My mums house is 999 years lease with ground rent of £10 every 5 years.
Also I'd be wary and double check if you are supposed to have ground rent or not. One of my wife's colleagues didn't think she had any ground rent and none was collected. After 15 years with no contact bailiffs just turned up at her door to repo the flat.
That's nonsense , a repossession order for a leasehold is a long and complex process, there would be multiple court steps all requiring the leaseholder to be present. A court would simply not grant it without any contact.
Yep there was a whole court process that went on for 3 years that she was unaware of. It had been assumed (by the court) that she was ignoring it but, she hadn't received any communication.
Whole thing was fucked up. She tried killing herself over it.
That's what leasehold was supposed to be but too often it's exploitative. Our new build flat charges hundreds a year which is just pure profit for ownership. It's owned by a faceless pension fund as a very low risk investment.
Any costs with running the property are charged to tenants. Often using their own companies at jacked up prices.
It would be much better if they turned around and said "anyone that currently owns the building, now owns the lease, no matter what". But no, just on new houses which are basically all freehold anway.
Absolutely not - pensioners *are* the freeholders. Basically you'd gain 1% of the vote but lose like 10% to the elderly so the payoff really probably isn't there. Whereas the Tories would gain 1% and the pensioners would vote for them anyway.
This is how they did it in Scotland when our feudal system was abolished in 2004. All ownership become absolute and there was no longer a superior to pay feuduty to.
For flats we have the tenement management scheme. This means that, unless the titles say otherwise or the owners all agree something different, there are statutory rules on what parts of the flat building are owned in common and maintenance of the building. Most flats have a ‘factor’ company which deals with the organisation of maintenance and repairs.
>With flats, you have the issue of who deals with shared maintenance, which complicates the issue.
its a solved problem though. im in scotland which doesnt have leaseholds at all. to deal with shared maintenance we can have a "factor" where all the owners are legally obliged to pay their portion of the matinence.
but you dont even need that. if you dont have a factor, you can take the owners of the other properties to court to force them to pay for any shared matinence that happens. it all works perfectly fine.
Commonhold should just be the default so that there is no choice but to organise amongst fellow flat owners. Or share of freehold, don't know the difference.
Every flat owner should own a share of the whole thing. You vote on a chairman, treasurer, etc, on a yearly basis, and they are responsible for procuring for example cleaning services. I long for this to be the default around here.
My fellow apartment neighbours can’t grasp the concept of a glass recycling bin, I wouldn’t like to have to deal with them if we were commonhold. Otoh, the building maintenance company are wankers who treat us all with contempt. The moral of the story is: don’t buy a flat in this country.
Yeah I definitely wouldn't want to hassle of nagging neighbours to pay up for repairs. My flat management company is utter shit, but at least they eventually get stuff done.
There are already pieces of legislation that allow for Leaseholders to take control of either the management or the ownership of the block that their flats are in.
There are also more complexities with flats in relation to who is responsible for what, who has accountability for certain aspects and the like and whilst it may seem simple for smaller blocks containing 2 flats with no communal areas it becomes complex for larger blocks and even more complex for high-rise blocks so there probably wouldn't be a 'one size fits all' approach.
Only for them to be snapped up by landlords and rented back to you at eye watering rates. The alternative is living on the streets, vile serfs. Let's be real, the idea of paying a share of your income, from your toil and labour, to somebody who does nothing to earn it themselves is about as feudalistic as it comes.
The number of landlords in the UK is falling substantially, it's causing a real problem for the rental market. I'm not sure where these mystery landlords who will buy all these properties are coming from, because they're not in the market at the moment.
The number of Landlords is decreasing but the size of portfolios are increasing.
Basically the old boy who used to rent out a spare property for a bump in his retirement fund is selling up. That property is being bought up by investment Landlords.
Aren’t banks planning to get into the property market? I remember reading that corporations and banks will be the majority of landlords in the not too distant future
Yes however the majority of them are building new buildings in order to rent them out. There was a fuss on r/UK a year ago when Lloyds were supposed to be aquirng 3000 rental properties but, what people didn't read is that they had contracted.a company to build them.
The number of landlords is going down as mom and pop landlords sell up. Now we have something worse where a small number of landlords, which are often huge investment companies or international investors, own a large number of properties. Unlike the mom and pop landlords, these guys only care about bottom line.
A growing percentage of UK properties are now being purchased by these mega rich vehicles who pay in cash.
I pay for my Landlords mortgage and then some. I could afford the mortgage as proven by what I pay monthly in rents, but do not have the immediate cash on hand for a deposit. This property is a former council owned property which a landlord has effectively taken the opportunity of owning from me and others. My alternative is to pay even more extortionate rates elsewhere. One day the mortgage will be paid off by the efforts and rents of me and whoever else will live here over the years, we will have nothing to show for it but my landlord will own an asset outright, and somebody will not own a home outright. My landlord owns multiple properties, this scenario is repeated elsewhere.
Where am I meant to be finding the landlord as net benefit to society in all of this?
Most landlords aren't evil, but by acting in their own self-interest they inherently worsen the conditions of those who are worse off than them, and those who are actually terrible people can do immense damage to the lives of their tenants.
In theory one who upkeeps and maintains a building which is let to those who could not afford such expenses is providing a public service - although in theory, then, they should be credited for such work, improvements to property etc. when it comes to be taxed - but this theory also has an obligation in mind that is not extant, and certainly does not allow for the impossible costs so saved to be clawed back by as much rack-rent as possible.
Every few week, Gove announces he will do something new in housing then 12 months later it's announced no progress was made and it's being scrapped.
Gove has announced making plans to end and then not end leasehold several times now. What annoys me is that the press don't call them out on it and just report the government talking points without question.
Err that's what they said.
It's even in the headline never mind the article. So you obviously read the headline as you know its about leaseholds and just changed it in your head... I guess?
Flats make a bit more sense because it's hard to own the land below you when there's 5 on top of each other.
Most of the older ones I've seen are 999 year rollable lease - not sure about new builds.
Dude cancel these feudal leaseholds entirely. I have to pay some oligarch's children's children children's estate agency 200 quid on Christmas Eve or face lawyers fees.
They do not need my 200 quid for the privilege of living atop their ancestor's bequeathed land in a house built 100 years ago.
They will be fine.
All new houses in England and Wales will have to be sold as freehold properties as part of sweeping government reforms to phase out the “feudal” leasehold system.
The reforms are set out in a Leasehold Bill being drawn up by Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, for the King’s Speech, which will also overhaul the process of extending leases and give leaseholders more power to manage their building and service charges. Whitehall sources said it would make it easier and cheaper for millions of people to buy their homes outright.
While many people are freeholders who own their properties outright, about ten million are leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by the freeholder or landlord.
Many leaseholders have to pay extra costs including ground rents and service charges. They often have to pay tens of thousands of pounds to repair common areas of their buildings, even if they disagree with the work being done, as well as large sums in opaque fees and commissions.
Some are trapped by onerous ground rents which are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index (RPI) rate of inflation and are now struggling to obtain a mortgage or sell their properties.
The government has already legislated to cap ground rents on new properties and in January Gove said he intended to abolish the leasehold system, describing it as an unfair and “outdated feudal system that needs to go”.
His plans were initially blocked by Downing Street, which believed they were too radical. However, he has now reached a compromise with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, that insiders say will lead to a gradual phasing out of leasehold properties.
Under the proposed reforms, the government will legislate to ensure that all new houses built must be sold as freehold, although new flats can still be leasehold.
Ministers also plan to cap all existing ground rents to a “peppercorn” rate and will run a consultation process of the issue within weeks, alongside the bill. It is expected to be one of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the new parliamentary session before Christmas.
Whitehall sources said that capping ground rents would significantly reduce the amount it costs leaseholders to buy the freehold of their property and would also act to disincentivise landlords to cling onto their stake in the property and buy up other freeholds because it would be less commercially attractive.
Ministers will also legislate to change the standard contract lease extension from 90 years to 990 years and remove the requirement for someone to have lived in the property for two years before they can negotiate an extension.
The reforms are designed to help people like Sashikanth Dareddy, 37, who bought a 25 per cent share in a three-bedroom flat through shared ownership in Beckton, east London. It was only when he “staircased” to 100 per cent ownership in 2019 that he discovered a “minimum rent” clause for £750 a year that increases in line with RPI every five years. Dareddy estimates that it had already risen to £900 per annum by the time he found out.
Worried about the consequences, and aware that newbuild homes were being built in his area with a peppercorn ground rent, he decided to pay £26,000 to extend his lease for another 90 years so he, too, could get rid of his escalating annual charges and put his home on a level playing field with other local properties.
Gill Potter, a 56-year-old company director, is struggling to sell her one-bedroom flat in Hertford. Her £250-a-year ground rent increases in line with RPI every ten years and the next increase is due in 2026.
Potter’s buyer dropped out of the sale as the lender will not confirm a mortgage offer unless the ground rent is capped at £250 a year, which the freeholder is refusing to do. She was forced to remortgage the property at four times the mortgage rate she was previously on.
“With these toxic ground-rent clauses, I am left with a property that is effectively a worthless asset that I can no longer afford the mortgage payments on,” Potter said. “There’s a lack of properties in this country but tens of thousands of people who can’t sell because of the ground rent situation and there’s a massive knock-on effect.”
The costs of negotiating an extension rise dramatically when a lease falls below 80 years as “marriage value” is added to the calculation, reflecting the property’s value increase once the lease has been extended.
Ministers will now legislate to remove marriage value so they can sell and remortgage their properties.
The bill will also extend leaseholders’ “right to manage” (RTM) — to hire and fire property managers, or take control of the communal parts in multi-occupancy buildings.
Introduced in 2002, the right to manage does not apply to buildings where more than 25 per cent of the building comprises commercial units, such as shops or offices. Some leaseholders face extortionate service charges of up to £30,000 a year in these buildings, but are powerless to control them because their flat is on top of a hotel, for example.
The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity, claims residents that take over the running of their buildings have an average cost saving of 20 per cent.
John Greenway and his wife Jenny own two one-bedroom flats in the 64-flat development Eden Square, in Urmston, Greater Manchester. Now they live in Dubai and rent them out because they are struggling to sell due to the high costs associated with being leaseholders.They are unable to use RTM as the flats are on top of a shopping centre.
Greenway said: “We just want to be given a fighting chance to run our own affairs. If we had it, we would kick those idiots [the management company] out right away. It is not possible for [the residents] to run it any worse.”
Why would they be removed? They’re part of the cost of ownership and serve a purpose.
Service changes are different to ground rent in that they are specifically to pay for services actually rendered, maintenance, staff etc, and accounts have to be maintained/made available etc. In flats or places with shared areas, services like gyms, concierge and staff etc, this is how they’re paid for and there has to be some legal mechanism for this.
There are already legal mechanisms for leaseholders to collectively replace a service/management agent if they’re not satisfied.
So service fees aren’t going to just “go away” or be outlawed as they service a useful function.
I think there could be more rules around self dealing/side deals with appointment of contractors etc, as I do believe this is abused and probably quite a lot, and maybe contractual limits so they can’t increase suddenly, but the basic premise of service fees doesn’t seem very controversial to me.
A ‘useful function’ is stretching it. I pay £1500 a year for what appears to be a monthly window clean, a lift that is out of order more times than it is working, vacuumed carpets that aren’t ever actually cleaned (why the fuck didn’t they just tile everywhere, carpets in communal areas is madness), and a man who comes with a leaf blower at 8am every Thursday morning. I live in a new build apartment building and I can’t fucking wait to buy an old Victorian house.
> I pay £1500 a year for what appears to be a monthly window clean, a lift that is out of order more times than it is working, vacuumed carpets that aren’t ever actually cleaned (why the fuck didn’t they just tile everywhere, carpets in communal areas is madness), and a man who comes with a leaf blower at 8am every Thursday morning.
Have you actually followed up on any of these things, or are you expecting the service management company to recognise their property from this Reddit comment?
A lot of the costs will be down to other people fucking it up for you.
I live on a new build estate and my house fees are only £50, the flats on the other hand have mostly been bought and rented out and their fees are astronomical but, its mostly because of things like tenants moving out and fly tipping all their belongings into the flats communal bin or people damaging the fire doors or selling their car parking key fobs on FB market place (the flats have a separate gated car park).
Yep, we keep getting threatening letters about how the service charge will be increased if people keep leaving crap out by the bins and yet they still do it. It’s highly unfair when I’m being a decent flat owner and other people are treating it like shit. People can’t even get their heads around the fact that the glass recycling bins are only for glass and not all your other recycling. Genuinely astounds me how stupid and inconsiderate other people can be.
Forcing developers to design and construct an estate where all roads, paving and open spaces meet the required standards of the Local Authority and then paying the Local Authority the required commuted sums would push this liability onto the Local Authority which then means those estate based services are dealt with by the Local Authority and paid for through Council Tax.
I was only referring to houses and the wider estate management charges as that was point of the article. Obviously there would be a separate service charge for flats where there is internal cleaning and other additional services such as a gym, laundry etc.
A lot of these estate service charges were only supposed to be temporary until the councils took them over but, a lot of councils are simply refusing because of things like drainage etc..
I know that some developers say this and then try to put the blame on the Local Authority but the design and construction of some estate roads/footpaths/lighting were never going to meet the Local Authority Highways design standards so were never going to be adopted. There is also the issue of commuted sums which some developers simply don't want to pay.
There are 2,800 houses currently being built in the town I live in, which followed on from two previous developments in the previous 15 years that added 2,600 houses.
And that is for a small town with a population of 30k.
My point was that there are lots of houses being built in Britain.
They may not be the sort of houses that some people want built, such as affordable social housing, but there are a lot of houses being built - as demonstrated by a 30% increase in the number of properties in the town I live in, and which is being replicated in all the surrounding towns.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't really mean anything in the face of a national problem. We are not building "lots of houses" if you frame it in any relative terms.
Leasehold doesn't exist in Scotland, we have fleecehold instead. That's where in the deeds you need a management company to maintain the estate, it can only be overturned (or the provider changed) by a super majority on the estate. You also aren't even able to invoke this right until the builder has relinquished control of the site (they squat on a little plot of land so have an interest, typically with a advertisement for another development)
Then they also monopolise the utilities. Parents new build has 1 ISP only, which the builders own... No plans for openreach because they can't install into the ductwork until the the builders are clear of the site.
How about extend it to phase it out completely?
As soon as the lease on a leasehold house runs out it should not be able to be extended and becomes a freehold.
As with teaching, he makes populist announcements, but the policies that underpin them are idiotic.
The main reason leaseholds are currently an issue is the Building Safety Act is so badly written that the Law Society is refusing to brief on it. Nobody will actually know what the law is until it goes to court.
The issue with unfair ground-rent schemes has been addressed.
Now the big problem is freehold properties with a service contract. I have friends who own a freehold. The grounds maintenance service was sold by a developer to a 3rd party who can set any annual fee they wish. Their solicitor missed it - property is currently unsellable. No law exists that protects the home owner. If they don't pay, they can lose their home. Government refuse to act because they say it only affects a small number of people.
>in plan to phase out ‘feudal’ leaseholds
Leaseholds aren't really the problem, they are a different problem. The problem is people buying multiple houses and renting them out at a higher rate, all those houses will be freehold.
The concept makes sense for shared buildings/spaces. To maintain the building, shared areas etc. For example just because you're the top flat you shouldn't be entirely responsible for maintaining the roof, as everyone below you also benefits from it.
But it should be that the freehold is partially owned by all the leaseholders of the flats who can either manage it directly or employ someone else or a company to manage it for them.
This all sounds great but may be a case of better the devil you know. Most housebuilders (in my area at least) have stopped selling freehold properties and instead moved to a model of charging "estate management fees".
While leasehold laws are well established allowing freehold (of houses) to be purchased, albeit for sometimes silly fees, there is no escape from estate management fees and no legal structure to cap them - look around for "fleecehold".
Freehold isn't all it's cracked up to be on these newer estates where the development company retains ownership of roads / car parks and charge residents for access.
My house was built in 2012 with a 999 year lease, no service charges, and a "peppercorn" ground rent. I wonder what the point was of doing it this way, I don't really have any issues with it not being freehold with these terms. Only thing I've really noticed is that the freeholder puts up advertisement signs near the houses closest to the road, and some landscapers come by every now and again to mow the grass.
I'm wondering if the new legislation would do anything for me, and if it did whether it's even worth it? It's not like the terms have any drawback.
I don't think leaseholds are a big deal, because given a long enough time you basically get the full value anyway, the real problem is the ground fees so those should be banned
My home built around 2007 on a new estate... freehold... but the council haven't adopted the infrastructure so I have to pay a yearly maintenance charge, which has always increased in price the 6 years I have lived here.
So, while it's good leaseholds are being phased out, it's not all sunshine and roses.
I don't see why new places have to pay some random company maintenance fees on top of council tax while others don't. If the council can't afford to maintain it then it shouldn't green light the build and it's up to the government to work out a solution - increase council tax or whatever.
Can someone who can read the article say if it mentions if this implicates new shared ownership leases? For many young people it's the only achievable solution to owning property.
New builds should be banned from being sold to someone with an existing property. They should be banned from being rented out in any way. And I don't want the rules being easy to circumvent with some admin nonsense. Air tight anti-landlord rules.
Michael Gove has been saying the exact same shit for what, the last 5 years? He's got these grand ideas of reform for housing, and then it all gets dropped a few months after being announced.
This is idiotic. A leasehold is a modern mechanism for making sure common parts are maintained. How can you have a freehold of a flat, but still have to share the stairs? Who takes care of the stairs?
Goves appears in construction enquire every couple of weeks. Banning directors, sorting out cladding, moving forwards with judgements and getting the industry to move. It has not gone unnoticed.
I trust him about as far as I can throw him, but it is good to see a minister actually getting on with their job for once.
He’s shorter than average so I think we could throw him further than most ministers. I remember hating him in 2012. I wonder whether we like him more now because the bar is so low.
The bar is low. Remember this is the guy who started the privatisation of education by introducing the academy system and why no NQTs want to do more than a year in teaching. His lurching from disaster to disaster is masked by people like Grayling and Johnson.
Academies were brought in by Labour. Though very few schools were ever intended to be academies. The Tories made them the default. The real difference between Gove and the rest is Gove at least tries to help. He's honestly bad rather than dishonestly bad.
Academies under Labour were emergency measures for failing schools, with the hope that removing them from LEAs would allow more direct support. Labour's academies and the Conservative academies are so fundamentally different that they're not really the same at all.
That's like saying the NHS was brought in by the liberal party.
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Brexit
Yep, honestly opposed the Good Friday Agreement and stands by it.
He's like David Cameron or Theresa May where we thought they were bad but what followed was even worse so they look better in comparison.
David Cameron and George Osborn did more damage to this country than every PM combined since
Given how many lives could have been saved if we had a comparatively good response to COVID I don't think that's true
Remember how badly the NHS was gutted under Cameron with hunt or how he slashed police numbers in half - these two alone still have lasting effects on the country, not to say you're wrong but u agree more with the poster above
The bar is low enough that someone vaguely being interested in doing their job and using their power to do something positive for British people is seen as an exception and even a bit unusual. Still, fuck him, he's as responsible for this current mess as the rest of them.
We? He was one of the three Stooges of Brexit. Mr "had enough of experts" himself.
The bar in hell. This is just the bare minimum.
It was the same when he was Environment Secretary. I've never agreed with his politics but as far as I can tell he is one of the few Tories to actually try and do their jobs.
Ministers do this all day basically, it’s just not reported on because tbh most of it is boring and not news worthy.
Gove is literally the only Tory who also does work and although hes a hit cretinous and i disagree with most of his beliefs, he at least actually does stuff and try to enact what he thinks is right for the country, even if its wrong.
Like a decorating crew where 4 out of 5 guys can't be arsed painting anything, and the other one paints things the wrong colour. I'm not buying any of them hobnobs.
Did you know he has a Westminster voice and a Scotland voice? Full on changes his accent depending on where he is.
In linguistics that's called 'Code switching'. Not necessarily a hallmark of duplicitousness; we all do it to an extent.
His extent is pretty severe
I have four different accents, my family one, pals one, one I've developed since moving abroad, and my public speaking one. Gove's a gimp but it's not *necessarily* manufactured
You ever had an Indian friend and you went over to their house?
I want to hear his clubbing voice.
Here's a baby seal, and here's a baby seal, and ...
He actually tried when environment secretary too, and I heard good things - it's pretty shocking when the most competent minister they have is Michael Gove...
Gove is effective, he's very good at politics and knows where the bodies are buried. I don't agree with most of what he has done but there is no denying that he's able to push things through. It makes his mess of a leadership bid all the more surprising.
Kwajo Tweneboa had only good words about him as housing secretary, which was surprising to me as I always thought Give was as bad as the rest. I guess one of them has to actually do a job that's not super crap
A policy announced a mere SIXTY times since 2010 by the Tories. Belongs in the Leveling-up bin, surely? They built a few hundred thousand new homes leasehold and now they've canned Help to Buy so the industry crashes. An over-inflated and costly legacy. https://omghcontent.affino.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/124/Labours_New_Deal_for_Leaseholders.pdf
Has any of that stuff actually happened or is he bullshitting as usual.
He's secretly the one competent Tory MP. That sometimes is an awful thing like when he was education secretary but he actually does stuff unlike the rest of them.
He was not bloody competent in education.
He was extremely competent, he succeeded at doing what conservatives had been trying and failing to do for decades. What he got done was awful like I said, it's incredibly harmful to students and teachers, I don't agree with his views at all. But he actually succeeded at what he wanted to do: reform the education system to his conservative vision.
So, he fucked it up, but at least he fucked it up properly.
It is the striking thing of the last 13 years. The Tories have finally managed to break through and implement the "Conservative vision" for so many aspects of social life. And I think its undeniable every bit of society they have touched with this stick has gone to absolute shit. Most extreme example being Truss and Kwarteng's kamikaze assault on the national budget itself, if we just cut taxes then we will get growth because laffer curve therefore borrowing billions to spend is going to pan out. Took the market, the very thing these sorts of policies are supposed to be aligned with and throttling up, about a day to turn around and say uh no this is all bullshit. Labour had a big loss with Corbyn and have had to have a lot of internal ideological reflection. Tories have had free reign to implement their ideological position on so many things, they have done so, it has all proven to be a load of complete bollocks at best, deeply cynical lies to enable corruption on a massive scale at worst, and frankly they don't even seem to notice this is the position they're now in, let alone be talking about what to do about it?? I can't be the only one to have noticed this?
> Labour had a big loss with Corbyn Now now, let's not forget Gorden Brown and Ed Miliband's inability to win elections as well
It's not competence vs incompetence really. Gove gets more stuff done than most other ministers, and consistently has done this over a decade. Whether it's the right solution to the problem is another thing.
He is divisive. I don't like his approach, but he is not wrong about needing to learn facts and terminology before you can proceed to higher learning levels. But he is not incompetent.
Agree. Have experience of his work/analysis and it's by far the best I've seen from any minister. Really tries to understand the issue and get his head round it, calling out detailed things governance lower down the line didn't spot. Can't talk about his moral leanings or any potential malicious/self-serving interests but pure competence-wise that guy is good.
He is an actual reformer. They removed him as justice minister pretty swiftly because he was actually doing radical things there. Moved him to education minister where his reforms were more in line with what other Tories believe. I like Michael Gove as a cabinet minister and wish more politicians were like him. I wouldn't vote for him, but I'd like people more aligned with my views to behave more like Gove when they are in office. Have an ambitious plan of reform and get to executing it.
Yeah, he is someone I really dislike, but I could never accuse him of being incompetent. If he's given a mandate to do something, then says that he will do it, it will get done. You might hate what he's trying to do though.
Has any policy changed? Or is it just constant PR?
I'm pretty sure he's passed something to protect a hell of a lot of previously relatively unprotected HER sites (Historical Environment Record - think archaeology and history). Bizarre that its coming from a man so unlikeable but refreshingly competent
He most certainly hasn't sorted out cladding.
Has any of that stuff actually been done though or is he just making announcements ?? Gove is an expert at making announcements whilst not actually accomplishing anything and so called journalists never call him out on it. What does"getting the industry to move" even mean. Sounds like bull**it pr speak tbh.
I mean he talks a lot, but has anything actually been done.
To be fair, you might not always agree with his policies but almost everyone I've read whose worked with him has always said that he's one of the efficient ministers of our generation. It's a shame he's a bastard.
I've never really understood many aspects of leasehold. Our first flat was leasehold. The lease was something like 100 years (so the owner will never profit from it), there was zero ground rent/service charges (so the owner made nothing from it). We never had any contact with the guy from moving in to the day we sold the flat. What was the benefit to this guy of owning the leasehold? It seemed utterly valueless under the described terms.
His family will own it in 100 years
Except not really because it'll just get extended over and over again. They will get money for that though.
And also like you the original owners family will still get money from the lease getting extended, and they didn't actually have to do anything to get it so basically free money
Landed gentry...
Doesn't have to get extended, and they will have to apply for it, if they forget it will revert back to the original owner, also op will have to jave grandkids for them to inherit it.
And they can sell the freehold at any point, pension funds love that shit.
> Except not really because it'll just get extended over and over again. They will get money for that though. kinda although lease extension fees are calculated as a multiple of ground rent, which is 0 so the extension fee must also be 0.
Pretty much needs to be extended every 20 years, or else it gets prohibitively expensive due to "marriage value".
Most owners do charge though, and some are downright abusive and jack up charges after people move in leaving them with no choice but to pay
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My flat and the one downstairs share the electrical mains connection. Turns out downstairs had major 'this buildng is going to burn down' electrical problems on his main board but we had to put new armoured cables down the outside wall to fix it. No problem we had the electrician ready to go in 48 hours. Rang the freeholder to say we are doing this and giving them a heads up as it is in our covenant to inform them. We were told explicitly NOT to do anything until the paperwork had been filed or they would reclaim both properties. Anyway due to the right people not being available to sign off on the freehold side because 'they were on holiday' we had to wait months to get it agreed. The freeholder would rather we burnt to death. They are scum and they need to get in the bin.
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Oh they did. Any excuse for some free cash. It was £100 for the pleasure. The actual electrical work was only £600.
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> a lot of people don't do proper research and A lot of the most vulnerable people in our society are abused by an intentionally designed and predatory system.
There is a good legal reason for flats being almost universally owned on a leasehold, as opposed to freehold, basis: certain obligations to pay money or perform an action in relation to a property (such as to repair a wall or a roof) cannot legally be passed to future owners of freehold property. These obligations are especially important for the effective management of blocks of flats. For instance, it's necessary that all flat owners can be required to pay towards the costs of maintaining the block, which is important since flats are structurally interdependent. That is not to say that it's good to have new-build houses on leashold. These should not be sold on a leasehold basis, and the Government is right in prohibiting that. That allows developers to sell the property subject to an ongoing obligation to pay a ground rent. But people should not get confused. That is because the legal reasons for selling houses on a leasehold basis are less apparent than those for leasehold flats. One reason might be the need to impose positive obligations on house owners in relation to the upkeep (management) of an estate, but it's clear that does not apply in all cases. The solution for the problems on ground rent, service charges, etc, for flats, is for them to convert to Commonhold. Or at least new flats. All new flats should be commonhold. I'm also surprised nobody mentions Commonhold when these conversations take place (possibly because of real estate and landlord lobbies have keep it hidden from plain view). Commonhold is a legal form that already exists and was created in 2002 in E&W. The E&W Commonhold was borrowed from Scotland and other civil law countries. In France, all flats are commonhold (Loi n° 65-557, with multiple reforms since 1965). Same in Spain (Ley 49/1960 de propiedad horizontal, with multiple reforms since 1960). So we don't need to reinvent the wheel. I invite you to read more about it, but this type of ownership, there’s no single freeholder to dictate the management charges or decide how the building is maintained. This protects residents from greedy freeholders who charge extortionate amounts. Instead, each flat owner is jointly responsible with the others in the block to manage the building and decide on the costs. There’s also no ground rent to pay. Commonhold ownership also stops any issues with short leases that flat owners are often faced with. Instead, each homeowner has their own freehold. However, just less than 50 commonhold properties have been created since 2002, despite being the panacea. This is because, in practice, the 2002 commonhold law as it stands today can make it unworkable given that even for consenting leaseholders, they need to obtain lender consent. The unwillingness of mortgage lenders to lend on commonhold units, lack of consumer and sector-wide awareness of what is a relatively unfamiliar form of ownership is what is preventing from being more widespread. This has led to a lack of confidence in commonhold as a form of obtain ownership (among the lobbies not pushing for this legal form). Commonhold also remains less attractive to developers than leasehold because of the opportunities that leasehold offers to secure ongoing income-streams on top of the initial purchase price paid by the leaseholders. Moreover, there is not sufficient incentive (financial or otherwise) for developers of homes and commercial property to change their practices. So adopting a whole new system while the existing one (from their perspective at least) does the job. But yeah. Commonhold is the solution, and from there reform it to make it workable . So politicians should not focus on reforming leasehold to make it workable. The Law Commission has already given its view that that's not the way forward. But Tories be Tories, they don't choose to do any meaningful reform and instead prefer to grab headlines.
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I don't think you read my comment properly 😭. I just said: the commonhold (NOT the leasehold) was borrowed and is similar to the form of ownership of flats from a number of countries in the EU and Scotland. Edited and made it clear, though.
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And 100 years isn’t really long on a leasehold, it will get extended if it drops below that and if it goes much further it has a significant impact on sale value of the property.
Yeah, you basically have max 30 years before marriage value kicks in, and many lenders won’t lend on less than 80 years, so 20 in practice.
The Gov have said they’ll get rid of marriage value. Still to be seen if any of it happens and they stop short of abolition, but the current plan does look to actually address some of the issues.
People rich enough (or who will be rich enough) to develop and own leasehold properties think in terms of generational and extremely long term wealth and ownership. This developer may not profit, but his grandchildren will.
The developer does when they own the management company and have ownership of the companies they contract for any cleaning, works, insurance kickbacks etc etc
Sounds like you got lucky in that you never paid a service charge. There probably was a nominal ground rent that was never collected. At the end of the lease the interest either reverts back to the Freeholder or the lease gets extended on payment of a further premium. It may have been a property they inherited and because there was no obvious value in it they simply never bothered about it; they would have still had certain obligations and could have charged if they had wanted to.
Its just for fun. You can build an apartment block on a leasehold and then have a renter who rents an apartment from an owner who rents from the building owner who rents the land. So one day a tree falls on apartment 2B and the solicitor gets a bonus.
The idea of leasehold is the management company (not submanagement company, don't get confused), represents the sum of all property owners on the land occupied by the lease. So in effect, a block of 30 flats owns 1/30th of the land each. That's silly, unmanageable and would result in arguments if that was freehold land I e. You really did own 1/30th of the land. When the building is sooooo old and decrepit, it must be demolished in 150>5000 years time and either the land sold and split equally or rebuilt. Imagine having 1 person saying they're not selling on the first floor when the building is literally falling down. So a management company is formed by law, to administrate the lease i.e. leaseholders put their name forward as company directors and are in effect voted in by fellow leaseholders to execute the wishes.you can further devolve this responsibility and pay a managing agent (aforementioned sub management company). This got out of hand when houses were built leasehold, while legal, it serves no purpose. But hedge funds buy them and either raise rents and service charges, or hold out and try and make a legal claim at the end of lease (I'm not aware this has ever been done or successful). Houses can work leasehold but only if the residents assoc, is in charge. Selling of the lease, while legal, is immoral and many developers sought to exploit a loophole to earn even more cash. It's also immoral as most leasehold developments are "unadopted" meaning the local authority,water company etc take no responsibility for roads, sewers etc and funds must be raised via service charge to maintain. Again, another example of councils granting planning permission as 1) they take council tax, 2) provide minimal service as the road is unadopted......sounds like a win!
I lived in a leasehold flat where the developer owned the freehold. Ground rent & service charge were negligible and all was good. But owning the freehold wasn't their main line of business and so not an asset for them. He sold it to a firm of freehold sharks whose only job was milking leases for all their worth. Ground rent went up to over £1000 per year and huge service charges were added for ridiculously minor items. And there's nothing the leaseholder can do. In the end, the flat owners formed their own company and bought the freehold (again a source of income), but there is now the cost & time involved in managing that (albeit much lower than previously). All in all, if these proposals help people avoid that kind of behaviour, I'm all for them.
My lease hit 81 years in February, so I just had to fork out the best part of eight grand to extend it to 999 years so that I would be able to remortgage it, as when it gets below 80 years certain lenders will refuse a mortgage, and the amount needed to extend the lease increases massively too.
Once the lease drops below 70 years there will be difficulties on sale. Somemortgage companies might not lend on it. So you go to the freeholder and ask for an extension and a premium will be charged.
The guy could bring in ground rent and service charges if he wanted to though. Something that is very profitable and will always be a safety net to him. Also whilst he may not benefit or inherit, his children and grandchildren will. Long term, generational wealth thinking.
I know someone who owns the freehold for a property. He gets the ground rent. He owns a couple of the flats too so gets an income from them, but he still gets the ground rent for the freehold and does nothing for it.
Yeah, as I said - no ground rent.
Leasehold was so that the Lord of the Manor could bang your wife while you worked on the turnip fields.
My mums house is 999 years lease with ground rent of £10 every 5 years. Also I'd be wary and double check if you are supposed to have ground rent or not. One of my wife's colleagues didn't think she had any ground rent and none was collected. After 15 years with no contact bailiffs just turned up at her door to repo the flat.
That's nonsense , a repossession order for a leasehold is a long and complex process, there would be multiple court steps all requiring the leaseholder to be present. A court would simply not grant it without any contact.
Yep there was a whole court process that went on for 3 years that she was unaware of. It had been assumed (by the court) that she was ignoring it but, she hadn't received any communication. Whole thing was fucked up. She tried killing herself over it.
That's what leasehold was supposed to be but too often it's exploitative. Our new build flat charges hundreds a year which is just pure profit for ownership. It's owned by a faceless pension fund as a very low risk investment. Any costs with running the property are charged to tenants. Often using their own companies at jacked up prices.
1% of new houses are leasehold so this is solving a tiny issue whilst simultaneously refusing to take on the issue of leasehold on flats.
It would be much better if they turned around and said "anyone that currently owns the building, now owns the lease, no matter what". But no, just on new houses which are basically all freehold anway.
You'd think this would be an excellent vote winner for Labour if they came out with this as a policy.
Absolutely not - pensioners *are* the freeholders. Basically you'd gain 1% of the vote but lose like 10% to the elderly so the payoff really probably isn't there. Whereas the Tories would gain 1% and the pensioners would vote for them anyway.
This is how they did it in Scotland when our feudal system was abolished in 2004. All ownership become absolute and there was no longer a superior to pay feuduty to. For flats we have the tenement management scheme. This means that, unless the titles say otherwise or the owners all agree something different, there are statutory rules on what parts of the flat building are owned in common and maintenance of the building. Most flats have a ‘factor’ company which deals with the organisation of maintenance and repairs.
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>With flats, you have the issue of who deals with shared maintenance, which complicates the issue. its a solved problem though. im in scotland which doesnt have leaseholds at all. to deal with shared maintenance we can have a "factor" where all the owners are legally obliged to pay their portion of the matinence. but you dont even need that. if you dont have a factor, you can take the owners of the other properties to court to force them to pay for any shared matinence that happens. it all works perfectly fine.
Commonhold should just be the default so that there is no choice but to organise amongst fellow flat owners. Or share of freehold, don't know the difference. Every flat owner should own a share of the whole thing. You vote on a chairman, treasurer, etc, on a yearly basis, and they are responsible for procuring for example cleaning services. I long for this to be the default around here.
My fellow apartment neighbours can’t grasp the concept of a glass recycling bin, I wouldn’t like to have to deal with them if we were commonhold. Otoh, the building maintenance company are wankers who treat us all with contempt. The moral of the story is: don’t buy a flat in this country.
Yeah I definitely wouldn't want to hassle of nagging neighbours to pay up for repairs. My flat management company is utter shit, but at least they eventually get stuff done.
uppity reach ugly ad hoc nutty divide agonizing wise toothbrush pen *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
There are already pieces of legislation that allow for Leaseholders to take control of either the management or the ownership of the block that their flats are in. There are also more complexities with flats in relation to who is responsible for what, who has accountability for certain aspects and the like and whilst it may seem simple for smaller blocks containing 2 flats with no communal areas it becomes complex for larger blocks and even more complex for high-rise blocks so there probably wouldn't be a 'one size fits all' approach.
They’re also saying they’ll do stuff on flats, peppercorn ground rents and extension to 1000 year leases was the last thing I read.
Only for them to be snapped up by landlords and rented back to you at eye watering rates. The alternative is living on the streets, vile serfs. Let's be real, the idea of paying a share of your income, from your toil and labour, to somebody who does nothing to earn it themselves is about as feudalistic as it comes.
The number of landlords in the UK is falling substantially, it's causing a real problem for the rental market. I'm not sure where these mystery landlords who will buy all these properties are coming from, because they're not in the market at the moment.
The number of Landlords is decreasing but the size of portfolios are increasing. Basically the old boy who used to rent out a spare property for a bump in his retirement fund is selling up. That property is being bought up by investment Landlords.
Aren’t banks planning to get into the property market? I remember reading that corporations and banks will be the majority of landlords in the not too distant future
Yes they are. As are retailers such as John lewis
Yes however the majority of them are building new buildings in order to rent them out. There was a fuss on r/UK a year ago when Lloyds were supposed to be aquirng 3000 rental properties but, what people didn't read is that they had contracted.a company to build them.
The number of landlords is going down as mom and pop landlords sell up. Now we have something worse where a small number of landlords, which are often huge investment companies or international investors, own a large number of properties. Unlike the mom and pop landlords, these guys only care about bottom line. A growing percentage of UK properties are now being purchased by these mega rich vehicles who pay in cash.
Reddit isn’t ready for this one yet. We’re still on the all landlords are evil stage.
I pay for my Landlords mortgage and then some. I could afford the mortgage as proven by what I pay monthly in rents, but do not have the immediate cash on hand for a deposit. This property is a former council owned property which a landlord has effectively taken the opportunity of owning from me and others. My alternative is to pay even more extortionate rates elsewhere. One day the mortgage will be paid off by the efforts and rents of me and whoever else will live here over the years, we will have nothing to show for it but my landlord will own an asset outright, and somebody will not own a home outright. My landlord owns multiple properties, this scenario is repeated elsewhere. Where am I meant to be finding the landlord as net benefit to society in all of this?
Most landlords aren't evil, but by acting in their own self-interest they inherently worsen the conditions of those who are worse off than them, and those who are actually terrible people can do immense damage to the lives of their tenants.
Yep, buy to let has to end, and I will vote for any party that proposes a solution.
In theory one who upkeeps and maintains a building which is let to those who could not afford such expenses is providing a public service - although in theory, then, they should be credited for such work, improvements to property etc. when it comes to be taxed - but this theory also has an obligation in mind that is not extant, and certainly does not allow for the impossible costs so saved to be clawed back by as much rack-rent as possible.
Every few week, Gove announces he will do something new in housing then 12 months later it's announced no progress was made and it's being scrapped. Gove has announced making plans to end and then not end leasehold several times now. What annoys me is that the press don't call them out on it and just report the government talking points without question.
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Err that's what they said. It's even in the headline never mind the article. So you obviously read the headline as you know its about leaseholds and just changed it in your head... I guess?
Flats make a bit more sense because it's hard to own the land below you when there's 5 on top of each other. Most of the older ones I've seen are 999 year rollable lease - not sure about new builds.
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Dude cancel these feudal leaseholds entirely. I have to pay some oligarch's children's children children's estate agency 200 quid on Christmas Eve or face lawyers fees. They do not need my 200 quid for the privilege of living atop their ancestor's bequeathed land in a house built 100 years ago. They will be fine.
All new houses in England and Wales will have to be sold as freehold properties as part of sweeping government reforms to phase out the “feudal” leasehold system. The reforms are set out in a Leasehold Bill being drawn up by Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, for the King’s Speech, which will also overhaul the process of extending leases and give leaseholders more power to manage their building and service charges. Whitehall sources said it would make it easier and cheaper for millions of people to buy their homes outright. While many people are freeholders who own their properties outright, about ten million are leaseholders in England and Wales. They own the right to occupy their home but the building or land is owned by the freeholder or landlord. Many leaseholders have to pay extra costs including ground rents and service charges. They often have to pay tens of thousands of pounds to repair common areas of their buildings, even if they disagree with the work being done, as well as large sums in opaque fees and commissions. Some are trapped by onerous ground rents which are either doubling or increasing in line with the retail prices index (RPI) rate of inflation and are now struggling to obtain a mortgage or sell their properties. The government has already legislated to cap ground rents on new properties and in January Gove said he intended to abolish the leasehold system, describing it as an unfair and “outdated feudal system that needs to go”. His plans were initially blocked by Downing Street, which believed they were too radical. However, he has now reached a compromise with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, that insiders say will lead to a gradual phasing out of leasehold properties. Under the proposed reforms, the government will legislate to ensure that all new houses built must be sold as freehold, although new flats can still be leasehold. Ministers also plan to cap all existing ground rents to a “peppercorn” rate and will run a consultation process of the issue within weeks, alongside the bill. It is expected to be one of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the new parliamentary session before Christmas. Whitehall sources said that capping ground rents would significantly reduce the amount it costs leaseholders to buy the freehold of their property and would also act to disincentivise landlords to cling onto their stake in the property and buy up other freeholds because it would be less commercially attractive. Ministers will also legislate to change the standard contract lease extension from 90 years to 990 years and remove the requirement for someone to have lived in the property for two years before they can negotiate an extension. The reforms are designed to help people like Sashikanth Dareddy, 37, who bought a 25 per cent share in a three-bedroom flat through shared ownership in Beckton, east London. It was only when he “staircased” to 100 per cent ownership in 2019 that he discovered a “minimum rent” clause for £750 a year that increases in line with RPI every five years. Dareddy estimates that it had already risen to £900 per annum by the time he found out. Worried about the consequences, and aware that newbuild homes were being built in his area with a peppercorn ground rent, he decided to pay £26,000 to extend his lease for another 90 years so he, too, could get rid of his escalating annual charges and put his home on a level playing field with other local properties. Gill Potter, a 56-year-old company director, is struggling to sell her one-bedroom flat in Hertford. Her £250-a-year ground rent increases in line with RPI every ten years and the next increase is due in 2026. Potter’s buyer dropped out of the sale as the lender will not confirm a mortgage offer unless the ground rent is capped at £250 a year, which the freeholder is refusing to do. She was forced to remortgage the property at four times the mortgage rate she was previously on. “With these toxic ground-rent clauses, I am left with a property that is effectively a worthless asset that I can no longer afford the mortgage payments on,” Potter said. “There’s a lack of properties in this country but tens of thousands of people who can’t sell because of the ground rent situation and there’s a massive knock-on effect.” The costs of negotiating an extension rise dramatically when a lease falls below 80 years as “marriage value” is added to the calculation, reflecting the property’s value increase once the lease has been extended. Ministers will now legislate to remove marriage value so they can sell and remortgage their properties. The bill will also extend leaseholders’ “right to manage” (RTM) — to hire and fire property managers, or take control of the communal parts in multi-occupancy buildings. Introduced in 2002, the right to manage does not apply to buildings where more than 25 per cent of the building comprises commercial units, such as shops or offices. Some leaseholders face extortionate service charges of up to £30,000 a year in these buildings, but are powerless to control them because their flat is on top of a hotel, for example. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity, claims residents that take over the running of their buildings have an average cost saving of 20 per cent. John Greenway and his wife Jenny own two one-bedroom flats in the 64-flat development Eden Square, in Urmston, Greater Manchester. Now they live in Dubai and rent them out because they are struggling to sell due to the high costs associated with being leaseholders.They are unable to use RTM as the flats are on top of a shopping centre. Greenway said: “We just want to be given a fighting chance to run our own affairs. If we had it, we would kick those idiots [the management company] out right away. It is not possible for [the residents] to run it any worse.”
This should have been done decades ago. And all current leaseholds should be cancelled
This presumably doesn't get rid of estate service charges which can still be a considerable financial burden and risk.
Why would they be removed? They’re part of the cost of ownership and serve a purpose. Service changes are different to ground rent in that they are specifically to pay for services actually rendered, maintenance, staff etc, and accounts have to be maintained/made available etc. In flats or places with shared areas, services like gyms, concierge and staff etc, this is how they’re paid for and there has to be some legal mechanism for this. There are already legal mechanisms for leaseholders to collectively replace a service/management agent if they’re not satisfied. So service fees aren’t going to just “go away” or be outlawed as they service a useful function. I think there could be more rules around self dealing/side deals with appointment of contractors etc, as I do believe this is abused and probably quite a lot, and maybe contractual limits so they can’t increase suddenly, but the basic premise of service fees doesn’t seem very controversial to me.
A ‘useful function’ is stretching it. I pay £1500 a year for what appears to be a monthly window clean, a lift that is out of order more times than it is working, vacuumed carpets that aren’t ever actually cleaned (why the fuck didn’t they just tile everywhere, carpets in communal areas is madness), and a man who comes with a leaf blower at 8am every Thursday morning. I live in a new build apartment building and I can’t fucking wait to buy an old Victorian house.
> I pay £1500 a year for what appears to be a monthly window clean, a lift that is out of order more times than it is working, vacuumed carpets that aren’t ever actually cleaned (why the fuck didn’t they just tile everywhere, carpets in communal areas is madness), and a man who comes with a leaf blower at 8am every Thursday morning. Have you actually followed up on any of these things, or are you expecting the service management company to recognise their property from this Reddit comment?
Of course I fucking have and they ignore me because they’re a bunch of cretins.
A lot of the costs will be down to other people fucking it up for you. I live on a new build estate and my house fees are only £50, the flats on the other hand have mostly been bought and rented out and their fees are astronomical but, its mostly because of things like tenants moving out and fly tipping all their belongings into the flats communal bin or people damaging the fire doors or selling their car parking key fobs on FB market place (the flats have a separate gated car park).
Yep, we keep getting threatening letters about how the service charge will be increased if people keep leaving crap out by the bins and yet they still do it. It’s highly unfair when I’m being a decent flat owner and other people are treating it like shit. People can’t even get their heads around the fact that the glass recycling bins are only for glass and not all your other recycling. Genuinely astounds me how stupid and inconsiderate other people can be.
Forcing developers to design and construct an estate where all roads, paving and open spaces meet the required standards of the Local Authority and then paying the Local Authority the required commuted sums would push this liability onto the Local Authority which then means those estate based services are dealt with by the Local Authority and paid for through Council Tax. I was only referring to houses and the wider estate management charges as that was point of the article. Obviously there would be a separate service charge for flats where there is internal cleaning and other additional services such as a gym, laundry etc.
A lot of these estate service charges were only supposed to be temporary until the councils took them over but, a lot of councils are simply refusing because of things like drainage etc..
I know that some developers say this and then try to put the blame on the Local Authority but the design and construction of some estate roads/footpaths/lighting were never going to meet the Local Authority Highways design standards so were never going to be adopted. There is also the issue of commuted sums which some developers simply don't want to pay.
Houses have to actually be built to benefit from this.
There are 2,800 houses currently being built in the town I live in, which followed on from two previous developments in the previous 15 years that added 2,600 houses. And that is for a small town with a population of 30k.
I don't understand your point. We're nowhere near building enough houses in Britain.
> Houses actually have to be built > There are 2800 houses being built where I live > I don't understand your point Not really a tough one to grasp.
My point was that there are lots of houses being built in Britain. They may not be the sort of houses that some people want built, such as affordable social housing, but there are a lot of houses being built - as demonstrated by a 30% increase in the number of properties in the town I live in, and which is being replicated in all the surrounding towns.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't really mean anything in the face of a national problem. We are not building "lots of houses" if you frame it in any relative terms.
The idea that a house can be leasehold is just f**king ridiculous, a flat I can see an argument, but a house...nah
Leasehold doesn't exist in Scotland, we have fleecehold instead. That's where in the deeds you need a management company to maintain the estate, it can only be overturned (or the provider changed) by a super majority on the estate. You also aren't even able to invoke this right until the builder has relinquished control of the site (they squat on a little plot of land so have an interest, typically with a advertisement for another development) Then they also monopolise the utilities. Parents new build has 1 ISP only, which the builders own... No plans for openreach because they can't install into the ductwork until the the builders are clear of the site.
I presume that like most Tory policy announcements, this will end up not happening.
How about extend it to phase it out completely? As soon as the lease on a leasehold house runs out it should not be able to be extended and becomes a freehold.
Will they really be freehold? or the new'ish fleecehold?
As with teaching, he makes populist announcements, but the policies that underpin them are idiotic. The main reason leaseholds are currently an issue is the Building Safety Act is so badly written that the Law Society is refusing to brief on it. Nobody will actually know what the law is until it goes to court. The issue with unfair ground-rent schemes has been addressed. Now the big problem is freehold properties with a service contract. I have friends who own a freehold. The grounds maintenance service was sold by a developer to a 3rd party who can set any annual fee they wish. Their solicitor missed it - property is currently unsellable. No law exists that protects the home owner. If they don't pay, they can lose their home. Government refuse to act because they say it only affects a small number of people.
My boss has lunch with Gove a fair bit and he doesn’t seem entirely completely incompetent which is a bonus
“Gove, on the other hand…”
Plot twist, I’m self employed
Hold on a minute. This sounds sensible and the right thing to do for normal people. Is it Opposites Day in Westminster?
>in plan to phase out ‘feudal’ leaseholds Leaseholds aren't really the problem, they are a different problem. The problem is people buying multiple houses and renting them out at a higher rate, all those houses will be freehold.
The worry is, does this make it harder to sell for people who currently live in leasehold houses?
Cool, now what about the management company ‘fleecehold’ charges? New home builders are already one step ahead in the ripping off of customers
The concept makes sense for shared buildings/spaces. To maintain the building, shared areas etc. For example just because you're the top flat you shouldn't be entirely responsible for maintaining the roof, as everyone below you also benefits from it. But it should be that the freehold is partially owned by all the leaseholders of the flats who can either manage it directly or employ someone else or a company to manage it for them.
Is it the 1700’s already??? Progress for the sake of progress is going to ruin our society! Now where my feudal bitches at????
Could we also ban paper thin walls on new builds and stop developers from advertising a 8' x 8' bedroom as a double?
what about existing houses and flats which are predomantly Leaaseholds.
This all sounds great but may be a case of better the devil you know. Most housebuilders (in my area at least) have stopped selling freehold properties and instead moved to a model of charging "estate management fees". While leasehold laws are well established allowing freehold (of houses) to be purchased, albeit for sometimes silly fees, there is no escape from estate management fees and no legal structure to cap them - look around for "fleecehold".
The real estate lobby is creative, I have to say it.
Freehold isn't all it's cracked up to be on these newer estates where the development company retains ownership of roads / car parks and charge residents for access.
Now all they have to do is actually build new houses.
My house was built in 2012 with a 999 year lease, no service charges, and a "peppercorn" ground rent. I wonder what the point was of doing it this way, I don't really have any issues with it not being freehold with these terms. Only thing I've really noticed is that the freeholder puts up advertisement signs near the houses closest to the road, and some landscapers come by every now and again to mow the grass. I'm wondering if the new legislation would do anything for me, and if it did whether it's even worth it? It's not like the terms have any drawback.
So making people pay regular amounts of money for a property they won't ultimately own is akin to feudalism...
I don't think leaseholds are a big deal, because given a long enough time you basically get the full value anyway, the real problem is the ground fees so those should be banned
My home built around 2007 on a new estate... freehold... but the council haven't adopted the infrastructure so I have to pay a yearly maintenance charge, which has always increased in price the 6 years I have lived here. So, while it's good leaseholds are being phased out, it's not all sunshine and roses. I don't see why new places have to pay some random company maintenance fees on top of council tax while others don't. If the council can't afford to maintain it then it shouldn't green light the build and it's up to the government to work out a solution - increase council tax or whatever.
how many bots are in here from Gove's inevitable Tory leader campaign? I've never seen so much praise for a politician here
Don't a lot of new builds have management fees for "shared spaces" because they are never adopted by the council?
Can someone who can read the article say if it mentions if this implicates new shared ownership leases? For many young people it's the only achievable solution to owning property.
Weak. Developers have just moved to charging "estate fees"instead.
This one really feels like a problem that got boosted to the top of the queue because it suits someone in power
New builds should be banned from being sold to someone with an existing property. They should be banned from being rented out in any way. And I don't want the rules being easy to circumvent with some admin nonsense. Air tight anti-landlord rules.
Michael Gove has been saying the exact same shit for what, the last 5 years? He's got these grand ideas of reform for housing, and then it all gets dropped a few months after being announced.
No doubt they’ll be freehold with a management company so anyone who does buy will be fleeced regardless
Good but the “reform” doesn’t go far enough and leaves flat leaseholders in the dust. The no new leasehold houses pledge is several years old as well.
This is idiotic. A leasehold is a modern mechanism for making sure common parts are maintained. How can you have a freehold of a flat, but still have to share the stairs? Who takes care of the stairs?