Who is the present freeholder of your block ? Buy a copy of the freehold title from Land Registry.

It may not be enough simply to change the managing agent for service charges account if the Lease still leaves payment of annual building insurance and payment of Notices of Transfer to Lessor who still gets the annual ground rent.

Best way forward is to set up a “Right to Manage” Company (RTM) to legally take over full administration of the lease including all Lessor’s income which becomes income due to RTM. ( Read clauses 95-97 in Chapter 15 of the Commonhold & Leasehold Reform Act 2002 about the powers of the RTM ( right to manage company.)

After RTM commences , the freeholder can only collect ground rent and deal with re-entry & forfeiture un der the lease.

Such builders/freeholders must scoop up hundreds of thousands of pounds in ground rent. That’s why the whole leasehold system is so flawed because you only really own the right to live there for the period of the lease or sell the lease to someone else. The freeholder wields all the power.

“Selling in batches” is spot-on. Twenty-seven across England and Wales in the same transaction!

If everyone who owns a newish, managed, leasehold apartment, or a freehold house on a newish site where there are bits of land that is maintained by a management company, knew what went on and goes on behind the scenes I think there would be a modern day “Peasants’ Revolt”.

In that event, all MPs would need to live in a house with a moat with a reinforced drawbridge!

Cunningly, we got a letter just before the two year anniversary saying the freehold had been sold, in effect it’s just transferred. I asked “Company A” (the builder) why we were NOT offered the freehold. Co A fudged it by saying they sell them in large batches. At the time, you couldn’t buy the freehold of a new develpoment until it was two years old, but I think this might have changed. So they defelcted the issue away from us.

RTE – right to enfranchise or collective enfranchisement forces the sale of the freehold – but if you need a LVT hearing (to agree the price of the freehold) and you probably will if you’re dealing with our friends, the legal costs are front loaded.

You also have to get your own valuation done by a surveyor familair with RTE. I phoned about five before I even found one who knew what I was talking about. That survey cost £1150. It might have even been more, but comapred with RTM, the RTE costs are a bit more front-loaded.

Looks like there may not be enough lettes in the alpabet, but I look forward to hearing the full story and the ultimate outcome.

Should Newsontheblock set up a prize for the most complex leasehold / freehold case? Yours should surely win!

The builder was a national PLC, let’s call it \Company A\ it was a new build development, less than 10 years old.

I was the first person to complete and move in. The parites to my lease are:

Company A
Company B
Myself

So Company A is the builder. Company A names a management company as party to the lease: \Company B\. BUT Company B isn’t Solitaire, it isn’t a PPMG co, in fact it isn’t a real company with an address, it’s just a company name, that me and all my neighbours own a £1 share in.

On the lease Company B is registerd at Company A’s national headquarters.

At this point in time, the builder as such, is the freeholder and Solitaire have no connection to the develpoment. Building continues for another six or seven months, and towards the end of that process Solitaire first appear as Property Managers. The co doesn’t introduce itself – there is a long handover, and eventually a service charge bill appears from…

Solitiare: Company C. (meanwhile the builder took and advance, on completion, this covers part of the first service charge.)

Company D: E&M appear a while later with arrears for ground rent.

Let’s say it’s now two years since the block was complete.

There have been no amendments to my lease – the lease is essentially cast-in-stone on the date it’s signed.

There are now five parties all with some legally binding connection:

Myslef
Company A: Builder
Company B: The residents’ Management Company (not Solitaire)
Company C: Solitiare
Company D: E&M

On the two year anniversary of completion, Company A transfers the freehold to another company; you’ve guessed, Company E. It is now registerd separately at Companies House. The freehold was not offered to the residents.

On the same date, Company E, transfers the freehold to Company F. None of this changes the lease.

Much later we discover Company F has one shareholder: Company A – so the link was never really broken. Companies B,C,D,F have at least two directors that sit on the boards of ALL the companies. So they’re linked but legally separate companies.

When we invoked the RTM, we discovered that Solitaire or Solitaire Directors (call them Company G if you like) were the sole director in Company B – of which every resident still has a £1 share.

When the RTM was invkoed, Company G (Solitaire Dirs) HAD to stand down as the sole director of Company B. It was by being a director that Solitaire, although not named in the lease was bound to the lease by being appointed by its mate Company A as sole direcor.

Now it’s in Company H, yep, the RTM’s co’s hands – Company H is the sole director of Company B.

So each change affects the lease, but the lease is never re-written or replaced – it’s not even updated. You just have to spend hours wading through the paper trail. There’s no easy way of explaining it, but feel free to ask questions if that does not make sense.

Incidentally Company F, using Company D as its agent is now a member of Company H – the RTM company, but the freeholder (Co F) only has one vote so its ability to influence a vote/decision is limited.

And – Company B is supposed to live on for the \benefit\ of non RTM residents – except we got 100% participation so we’re finding out about winding it up. The RTM now has to deal with all the compliance for Co B & Co H.

So we’ve moved the Registered Office for both companies to an outside firm of accountants and auditors… Company I. It just goes on and on.

For clarification and to assist others less well-informed than you, who was your builder and how many years ago? I.e. was your site built by a national developer or by a small builder?

I cannot understand how a lease could be drawn up without naming the freeholder. What does your lease state? “The freeholder” / “The lessor”?

When the freehold was first sold on were you, the leaseholders offered Right of First Refusal and if not, why not?

Leases are often drawn up and issued to residents in a company name in which the residents are all members.

Where I live, the freehold was originally retained by the builder, and then it was sold to another company, then bizarely sold again on the same date to another company. In other words, the physical owner of the freehold is not mentioned in my lease. It’s very confusing but basically the freeholer became the director of our originanl residents company.

All that said – and it’s impossibly complex – the name of the freeholder must be named on your service charge bill – I think that’s alegal req of the Lanlord and Tenant Act. You can force the sale of the freehold (Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993) – not the same legislation as RTM. So there are three ways of removing the PM Co – and the LVT route for challenging unreasonable service charges.

Interesting.

But in the case quoted in the original post, there is no RTM company as E & M agreed to a new Management Company to replace Solitaire (unless I have misinterpreted the facts).

Yet again there must be information in the relevants LEASES that could throw light on this situation and what and who is what.

Looks like this is an issue to which the Leasehold Advisory Service may be able to provide a definitive answer, because definitive (if that can ever be obtained in law) is what is needed here and for others who may be in the same situation, otherwise leaseholders will just be going round in circles getting nowwhere.