First of all, Happy New Year to all visitors, contributors and supports of TTAS and we hope that those hangovers aren’t too bad!

Today, we continue with our Review of the Year, when we look back on events that took place between April and June 2011.

Some of these events included a revamp for TTAS, Peverel’s administrators expected a ‘quick sale’ (which never happened), along with identifying who is really to blame for residents being exposed to property management companies such as OM Property Management.

TTAS believes that 2012 is going to be a very important year for leaseholders as there is an increased possibility that Peverel / OM Property Management “could” finally go out of business, whilst at the same time there is a risk that if this does happen – there will be plenty of other rogue managing agents out there who will happily step into Peverel’s shoes and continue taking advantage of residents.

Here we go with our April to June review..

April

Not Just Holding Companies in Administration

Internet forums, social networks and industry websites were buzzing with conversation about Peverel being in Administration.

Despite claims by Peverel Retirement’s Keith Edgar that it was business as usual and that Peverel / OM Property Management were not affected by Administration, one contributor found evidence to suggest that this wasn’t the case.

That’s because a Peverel Area / Regional Manager was asked who the holding company of Peverel Management Services Ltd (trading as Peverel Retirement) were. They chose not to reply, but further research on Companies House confirmed that Peverel Ltd were one of the four in administration.

From the accounts submitted to Companies House, under the Investments footnote, there were details of wholly owned subsidiaries and of the ten named, one of them was Peverel Management Services Ltd.

This confirmed that if Peverel Ltd is in administration, then so was Peverel Retirement which is a trading name of Peverel Management Services Ltd.

To date, Peverel / OM Property Management are yet to submit accounts for 2010 and yesterday (31st December) was the end of year for Peverel / OM Property Management’s 2011 accounts.

Confusion reigns over who we pay?

With all the Peverel associated company name changes, there was confusion as to who we should be paying our service charges too.

On service charge invoices received in April for 2011-12 accounts, the invoices clearly stated that Service / Management Charges are collected by Peverel Management Services Limited, of Queensway House, 11 Queensway, New Milton, Hampshire, BH25 5NR. Registered in England with Company No.1614866 on behalf of Peverel Properties Ltd.

As reported in March, Peverel Properties Ltd no longer existed having been renamed Proxima GR Properties Ltd.

Therefore, if residents were to pay Peverel Properties Ltd these funds, they are not paying the correct company that is responsible for these service charges.

This caused further confusion for residents because we were being told one thing by the Administrators, yet then discover these facts.

Zolfo Cooper (Administrator) and Peverel / OM Property Management failed to issue a statement to residents in regards to these concerns and 10 months later, we are still awaiting a satisfactory reply.

Another new name

Yet another new name came to light whilst TTAS was researching Proxima GR Properties Ltd and that was Peverel Property Ownership Ltd (PPO).

Peverel Property Ownership Ltd are major shareholders of Proxima GR Properties Ltd with over £28million pounds worth of shares.

However, when we undertook investigations into PPO we discovered that there were no references to PPO at Companies House or on Credit Safe (credit checking software).

You can see a full list of the companies PPO are shareholders of by by clicking here

Structure of OM Property Management

We published a comprehensive list of the structure of OM Property Management that was a follow up to the original list that had been produced by Charter Quays Residents Association.

You can view this list by clicking here

You’ll see what we mean when we say it’s a complex structure, once you’ve had the chance to puruse this list.

Campaign to Petition Housing Minister

In association with CARLEX and Charter Quay Residents Association, we launched a joint campaign to petition the Housing Minister – Grant Shapps, because he believes that the current leasehold legislation is fair and balanced.

We urged contributors to TTAS to e-mail Grant Shapps and/or write to local MP’s simultaneous to spread the word.

A few residents received a reply from their MP and Grant Shapps, but they weren’t anything to get excited about.

Later in the year we’d launch a new Government ePetition that we’ll cover later on in our Review of the Year.

Residents looking for neighbours

TTAS has been successful primarily because we’ve helped bring residents from all around together and has made us realise that the only way of defeating Peverel, is to fight as a group rather than an individual.

This lead to TTAS being contacted by residents asking if we knew of any local developments that they could team up with.

That gave us the idea of setting up the ‘Find a Friend’ pages, with the intention of publicising local developments allowing people to get together as one.

Find a Friend has been a great success and we would go on to publish details of over 1000 Peverel managed developments in December 2011.

May

Bad habits die hard

OM Property Management professed to be a company that were focused on providing the highest level of customer care and service, which would justify the excessive service charges that we were paying.

However, it wasn’t long before OM Property Management were back to the habits of their Peverel / Solitaire days… in fact we aren’t sure whether they actually left them!

Emails were being received by TTAS from residents up and down the country, who were telling us that OM Property Management were failing to reply to their complaints, charges were going up and services detieriorating.

As the year went on, more e-mails would be received and somehow OM Property Management would win News on the Blocks “Customer Service 2011 Award”…. which we concluded was purely based on the voting process being rigged

Sale of Peverel?

It was reported that the sale of Peverel would be commencing shortly, with Peverel’s Administrators Zolfo Cooper issuing sales documents for the marketing of the company.

Zolfo Cooper expected Peverel to attract interest from many of the capital’s major landlords and property companies and they hoped that the sale of Peverel would allow them to maintain the jobs of the majority of it’s employees.

However, this ‘quick sale’ never did happen and our sources told us that there had only been one or two interested parties – of whom shared concerns to the facts and figures presented to them, along with worries about online negativity.

We are of the opinion that Peverel as we know it will be broken up in to pieces and sold to smaller organisations in 2012.

The future looked bleak in March 2011 and in 2012 looks even bleaker.

June

Hindsight a wonderful thing

We began June reflecting on the fact that 80% of contributors to TTAS probably regretted purchasing their properties, having had experiences of OM Property Management.

If you could go back to the time when you first purchased your OM managed property – would you still buy it?

Developers, Solicitors and Councils are all to blame for the mess that we are in, because information has been concealed from homeowners all the way along and in a way we have been mis-sold our properties, because none of us were presented with ALL the facts at the time.

We would go on to report on mis-selling by developers in November and reveal that nothing was changing, despite awareness increasing.

Councils issuing 106 Agreements are to blame

Almost every new build development you pass will have property management charges associated with them.

Which lead TTAS to ask the question as to when this process became the norm and what ever happened to the Local Council being responsible for the up keep of a new build development.

We then discovered that the majority of new builds are granted planning permission, on the basis of a Section 106 Agreement.

In summary, Section 106 Agreements are put in place to put the responsibility of the development in the hands of the developer.

This allows the council to receive council tax payments for providing only a few services such as street lighting and refuse collection.

Developers agree to Section 106′s because they know that not only will they profit from building and selling homes, but they’ll also profit from selling the management of the developments.

More details of what Section 106 Agreements can be viewed by clicking here

Revamp of TTAS

TTAS underwent a major revamp in June which saw the site become a lot more user friendly.

We introduced a new ‘Advice’ page that explained in laymans terms some of the industry jargon and options that were / are available to leaseholders.

Feedback received from contributors that have used this advice to their advantage have said it was a great starter on their path to escaping their managing agent.

Conclusion

We hope this has been a nice reminder of the events of April – June and tomorrow we review what happened during July – September.