Case Law

Summary

The claims involved the valuation of premiums under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. The UTLC listed three applications for the specific purpose of considering the validity of a hedonic regression model (“the Parthenia model”) to determine leasehold relativity. The Tribunal indicated the approach to be adopted for assessing relativity for different lease lengths and commented on the use of published relativity graphs.

Summary

The respondent landlord sought service charges from an underlessee of a flat which included a contribution towards a sinking fund maintained by the headlessee. The UTLC determined that not all those costs were reasonably incurred under section 19 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.   

Summary

Under s.60 of the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, a lessee seeking a lease extension is liable to pay the landlord’s reasonable legal and valuation costs. The UTLC in this appeal decided that s.60 costs may properly include solicitor’s costs of (i) drafting a counter-notice under s.45 of the Act, and (ii) instructing a valuer. However, the burden of proving that s.60 costs are reasonable falls on the landlord. In this case there were a number of other actual and potential lease extensions in the same block and the UTLC found that a reasonable landlord would have obtained a 20% discount from its solicitors for handling the ‘bulk’ work on a large number of claims. The Upper Tribunal therefore allowed the landlord to recover both items of costs referred to above, but reduced the total amount of s.60 costs by 20% to reflect a reasonable ‘bulk’ discount.

Facts:

Tenants (T) held a 125 year lease of a flat in a building on a local authority housing estate (the Estate).  Both the building and the Estate had communal areas.  The lease provided:

Facts:

The landlord challenged a decision by the FTT that the lessees were not liable to contribute through their service charge to the cost of repairs carried out to two conservatories.  The conservatories had been added to the roof of the penthouse flat after that flat had been demised.

Facts

Tenants of several flats exercised the right to a new lease pursuant to Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the LRHUDA 1993. The parties agreed the premium but did not agree the costs payable to the landlord pursuant to section 60(1) of the 1993 Act. The landlord engaged an in-house solicitor.

Facts

The RTM company gave notice to acquire the right to manage. The landlord served a counter-notice. The counter-notice provided the landlord’s solicitors’ address as the address for service of future communications in relation to the subject matter of the notice and any further notice under Chapter 1 Part II of CLRA 2002. That claim was not pursued by the RTM company.

The power to appoint a manager under section 24 Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 (“the 1987 Act”) is wide and flexible. The F–tT is permitted to construct a scheme of management which may go beyond what is contemplated by individual leases. The process does not begin and end simply with the appointment of a manager. It may involve a detailed and extensive drawing–up of the rights and obligations that all parties will have when dealing with that manager.

It is undecided whether the indemnity principle – that a paying party cannot be ordered to pay a receiving party more in costs than the receiving party is itself liable to pay – applies in the F–tT. However, in RTM cases, section 88(2) of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 (“the 2002 Act”) applies, so as to expressly limit a landlord’s recoverable costs. An over–zealous application of the indemnity principle is to be avoided by tribunals.

A qualified leasehold covenant against structural alterations is breached where the lessee does not seek consent before carrying out the alteration, even where a landlord cannot be found or the landlord would have consented had he been approached for his consent.

Under the terms of the lease, the landlord was not entitled to recover, through the service charge, the legal costs of a section 27A application.

This case drills down to the contractual basis on which damages are awarded for a failure to comply with a repairing covenant.