The Jane Barry Column

The only trouble is, she says, they complain they have to pay out a lot of money for things they don’t want, like garden landscaping and a plush new carpet in the common parts. More than half the leaseholders are buy-to-let landlords, renting out their flats to golfers. They’re happy to invest in cosmetic improvements because it ups their rental yield. The two widows on fixed incomes are in a minority, so they don’t have any real say about the spiralling bills – they just have to pay up.

This clash of aspirations has always divided flat-dwellers. But, after ten years of buy to let, with many blocks 30%–50% sublet, it’s becoming a significant problem for less well-off leaseholders. And of course, major work on a block is always going to cost flat owners proportionally more than the equivalent work on a house – the building is larger, the job needs to be managed and scaffolding is usually by far the biggest item on the bill.

But if life is costly for flat owners, and getting more so, the main culprit is the existing legislation. And it’s all supposed to protect your rights.

If you live in a house and a major water pipe bursts, you phone a contractor and get it fixed. You don’t have to go through a lengthy three-stage consultation process or, if it’s a real emergency, apply to the LVT for permission to waive the procedure.

You’re unlikely, if you’re a householder, to have much truck with Health and Safety – you certainly aren’t required to have rigorous £1,000 risk assessments covering every aspect of your property - from fire precautions, water and electrics to the lightning conductor. And, unless you’re making alterations, no-one is going to fret about your compliance with disability legislation.

But if you’re a flat owner, a welter of existing legislation says your block has to bother about, and pay for, all of these things, and more.

The 2002 Leasehold Reform Act, in the interests of protecting your service charge money, lays down ornate accounting procedures that are difficult to observe and expensive to administer. And, so that you are fully aware of your rights and obligations, more new regulations mean your managing agent will have to set them out on paper and send them to you with every notice you receive.

Apart from the administrative expense, this exercise could cost the lives of acres of trees annually.

Asbestos regulations, FSA regulations governing the purchase of building insurance it’s all more work for your managing agent, involving more cost. Managing agents’ fees are rising above the rate of inflation.

But don’t think you can economise by doing without a managing agent. The complexity of running the average block is beyond the scope of a couple of volunteer leaseholders giving up their spare time. Failure to comply with these procedures incurs heavy costs for landlords which, if your block has bought its freehold, means costs for the residents’ management company – or you.
And it doesn’t stop with the running of your block. If your flat is in a pre-1991 conversion with a third of the properties sublet, recent government legislation classifies your building as an HMO, requiring expensive licensing and safety checks. While it has always cost more to sell a flat than a house, when HIPs come in next year, flat sellers will need to produce, at speed, eight more pieces of documentation than a house seller, making a HIP for a flat 50% more expensive than a HIP for a house.

Of all new homes built in 2004/5, 41% were flats and that figure continues to rise.

With more people living in flats, more thought must be given to the financial and legal realities facing flat owners. More leasehold reform is required to redress the imbalance between flat and house owners, as well as greater awareness of the disproportionate burden some legislation unwittingly puts the leaseholder under.

You can guess my advice to my friend’s mother. Stay put!