I couldn’t agree more. We were one of the “victims” of Simon Van Houten and our numerous complaints to Duncan Rendall were never properly investigated. It was not until we decided to leave Rendall and Rittner that Van Houtens fiddling became apparent and what probably started Rendall and Rittner looking more closely at what he was up to. To give Rendall and Rittner credit they did compensate us and dealt with the issues (too late), although I still have a nagging doubt on just how much we were frauded in total. This cost me a huge amount of time and anxiety as a director of our block of flats. The irony of this is that we were paying Rendall and Rittner to deal with all our management issues and yet the directors of our development were doing all the managing.

Bad luck? What? Bad luck for Rendall & Rittner that their sloppy accounting procedures no less their refusal to comply with the lease and the law when it suits them – including failure to account properly to lessees for service charge they collect from – means they have been caught with their pants down? I have to agree with Sebastian – jolly bad luck for RR – and even greater bad luck for those of us unfortunate enough to be lumbered with them as managing agent.

When RR is challenged they do offer refunds – with one hand and then, in our case, overcharge three months’ fees with the other. To be fair, they did refund this money, too, but not before it had been through the books and external audit procedure, approved by our flat management company directors to boot – and only brought to their attention by me. What with this and other matters including Van Houten’s non-membership of IRPM which, we heard in court, led to his eventual arrest, I am unpopular in certain quarters.

Modest refunds work for RR. But if they think you are asking for too much – as with our estate management company – then RR resigns. They did the same on the adjacent estate. Interestingly, the high level of service charge arrears’ that RR will leave behind needs to be seen to be believed. If you follow the trail, you will probably find a ‘minute’ somewhere which puts the blame for this ‘black hole’ in the accounts firmly on the RMC directors.

Redrow’s One Commerci Street

It was back to the boom days last night for a champagne reception at the top of the Gherkin tower in the City. The event was hosted by Steve Morgan, legendary founder of Redrow, who was launching his exclusive ONE Commercial Street just to the east of the City.

The apartments are to be managed by Rendall and Rittner, which manages 27,000 units and raises £70 million a year in service charges.

Morgan was happy to give LKP a tour of his new scheme and we discussed the issue of property management, which is not traditionally high on a developer’s agenda.

“After we have sold the units developers don’t usually think much about it, although it obviously carries reputational risk if things go wrong,” he said.

He was interested to hear of LKP’s meetings with other housebuilders and its passion to get a consumer-oriented approach into property management, as well as LKP’s accreditation process.

In other words: straight dealing, transparency and not having a laugh with stealth charges and sneaky commissions. England and Wales offer uniquely rich pickings here because, alone in the world, they retain leasehold tenure, which puts homeowners – or tenants, as leaseholders are in law – in a permanent position of vulnerability.

There were plenty of Far Eastern potential buyers at last night’s do, and estate agents will admit that it is a hurdle to get them to lay down £1 million plus for an apartment and then be told that they are just tenants. They go along with it in London because they have a general faith in English law and realise it is the local way of doing things.

But they don’t like it at all, and they would like it a good deal less if they were aware of the scandals surrounding the property management of high-end London sites, as revealed in LVT rulings.

LKP suggested to Rob Perrins, MD of Berkeley Homes, that buyers at its new site in Kensington High Street would probably be only too happy to pay a little more for commonhold – if it meant avoiding the time-consuming hassles with property management and the freeholder experienced by residents at St George’s Wharf or Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

It is a new departure for Redrow to build luxury flats in London, and another large scheme is being built at Kingston, in Surrey.

LKP has discussed the issue of leasehold management with the chief executives of Berkeley Homes, Barratt, Persimmon and Bellway.

The post Redrow boss Steve Morgan talks to LKP appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

After the £1 million fiasco at St George Wharf, new managing agent wins an award!

Last September, the Berkeley Group paid out £1 million to residents at the landmark St George Wharf (left), in Vauxhall, who had complained of loaded service charges, inter-company contracts and inflated insurance contracts.

Nine months on, the new managing agent Rendall and Rittner wins the Property Week Resi Award for “property manager of the year” at a black tie dinner in central London last night.

Many congratulations to them, for having cleaned out those particularly whiffy augean stables … and commiserations to LKP-accredited managing agent JJ Homes, who made the short-list.

The post St George’s under new management appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

An executive with managing agents Rendall and Rittner pleaded guilty on Monday to stealing £122,000 from his employers’ accounts.

Simon van Houten, 31, from Southend in Essex, used bogus company invoices to scam the company, which manages some of the most prestigious residential buildings in London.

Van Houten, a parish councillor at Paglesham, carried out the fraud over two years before he was rumbled.

He pleaded guilty just before the trial began at the Old Bailey on Monday, and is now awaiting sentencing on July 26.

The case is a reverse for Rendall and Rittner, which has been on a roll this year. It recently won the management of several prestige developments for the Berkeley Group and Redrow’s One Commercial Street, just east of the City. It also manages the upmarket eco resort the Lower Mill Estate in the Cotswolds.

Only last month Rendall and Rittner won a Property Week Resi award for turning round St George’s Wharf, built by the Berkeley Group, where residents received £1 million last September in settlement for over-charging. The complaints occurred when the site was under previous management.

The company, which is FSA regulated, is run by ex-barrister Duncan Rendall, a former chairman of ARMA, and Matt Rittner.

The post Executive guilty of plundering £122,000 from managing agents Rendall and Rittner appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Simon van Houten can expect ‘custodial’ sentence next week

The property management company Rendall and Rittner has made a statement to LKP about its former executive Simon van Houten, 31, who faces jail next week after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 at the Old Bailey.

A spokesman for the company said: “Mr Van Houten abused the trust of both clients and colleagues. Rendall and Rittner Limited immediately reimbursed the small number of clients involved and we are delighted that the police have successfully prosecuted the case we presented to them in 2010 and that justice has now been done.”

Scroll down for full report

The post Van Houten abused trust of clients and colleagues, says Rendall and Rittner appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Simon van Houten, who was paid a £42,000 salary, used East London leasehold accounts to pay for a “life beyond his means” in Chelsea

Simon van Houten, 31, was given a 30-month prison sentence at the Old Bailey this afternoon after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 from leasehold service charge accounts held by London managing agent Rendall and Rittner.

Van Houten carried out the fraud for two years between 2008 and 2010 by issuing invoices for a bogus maintenance company, “London Decorating Services”, which he subsequently approved and paid.

Thirty payments were made with amounts varying from £2,100 to £7,300. VAT was also added, with Van Houten using the VAT number he had lifted from a legitimate company.

By plundering the accounts of 1,400 units under his management in east London, Van Houten was able to live the high life, “beyond his means”, in Chelsea. Although the fraudster did not use the cash for any single large purchase, none of the money has been recovered.

In addition, the court was told he had a £35,000 debt with his bank.

The Old Bailey was told that suspicions were roused when it was discovered that Van Houten was not a qualified Member of the Institute of Residential Property Managers, as he claimed.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership has already reported that this information was revealed to Rendall and Rittner in August 2010 by Susan Stuckey, a leaseholder at the Mill Quay Estate, in east London.

In October Van Houten left the company after being confronted by director Duncan Rendall about the invoices, none of which were approved by other members of the firm. The fraudster was subsequently arrested in January 2011.

Rendall and Rittner has reimbursed the funds plundered from the accounts.

“This was a serious fraud,” said Recorder Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, who noted that Van Houten effectively tripled his £42,000 salary during the two years of his crime.

“The ultimate victims were tenants of the buildings you managed where you syphoned off the funds. This loss has been shouldered by your employer, although it may be covered by insurance, but we do not know.

“For more than two years you were prepared to expose tenants to the loss of £60,000 a year,” said Sir Geoffrey, who is celebrated for prosecuting former Yugoslavian premier Slobodan Milošević at The Hague war crimes trial. “You did this to live an expensive lifestyle in West London, although I note that all the testimonials to your character are from the eastern part of the city.”

Duncan Rendall and Matt Rittner in public gallery

Van Houten, a parish councillor at Paglesham near Southend, offered little in mitigation beyond his involvement in community events in Essex, which included volunteering to paint the local pub.

Van Houten is to serve 15 months in prison and 15 months on release under licence.

Both Duncan Rendall and Matt Rittner, the directors of the firm were in the public gallery to hear the sentence, as were Susan Stuckey and other Rendall and Rittner leaseholders.

Members of Van Houten’s family wept after the sentence was read out.

Outside the court, Stuckey said: “It is now up to Rendall and Rittner to demonstrate what steps it will take to prevent this crime from happening again.”

The post Fraudster managing agent gets 30 months jail for using East Londoners’ cash to fund high life in Chelsea appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership exists to protect ordinary leaseholders from being fleeced by landlords and their agents. They exploit the many opportunities offered by this flawed form of property tenure.

The LKP seeks to identify and accredit property managing agents who sign up to open accounting and straight dealing.

They charge a clear fee for property management – often on behalf of the residents’ own management companies – and do not pocket commissions offered by insurers, energy companies and assorted service providers.

In short, they don’t collude with others to cheat the residents, which is particularly depressing to encounter with the elderly in retirement developments.

To be accredited, LKP managing agents must sign up to a 35-point accreditation process, and residents in the blocks they manage are selected at random to provide references.

LKP also provides an editorial service for leaseholders.

Leasehold is a murky little corner of residential property, but with 1.8 million leaseholders and £3 billion a year spent on service charges there is huge scope to cheat unsuspecting homeowners.

Redress is complicated and expensive and, if you lose, all the freehold landlord’s legal expenses – barristers are now routinely used in LVTs – can be reclaimed in the service charges.

The trade bodies involved in property management – the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA), the Association of Retirement Housing Managers (ARHM) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) – have been well aware of abuses in leasehold management for years.

They all have codes of practice that are feeble and discretionary, and that have well attested loopholes – even RICS, which is the only serious professional body among them.

Following numerous leasehold scandals – often involving ARMA and ARHM members – they now parrot “transparency” and demand regulation. Previously they were silent, and neither ARMA nor ARHM has ever publicly expelled a member.

LKP is also lobbying for legislative change in leasehold, particularly to regulate managing agents who control vast sums of money without any supervision. We have instigated debates in both the Commons and the Lords on these issues.

Of course, the ideal solution to leasehold is to stop building any more of it, and instead to build commonhold – which is what applies in the rest of the world, outside England and Wales.

There is a mass of information on this site and we hope it is useful.

We welcome inquiries from ordinary leaseholders and have a network of supporters and sympathisers who have dealt with everything from £500,000 LVT bust-ups, to contested Right To Manage applications.

LKP provides no services for which there are charges. It is funded by the accreditation of participating managing agents.

Sebastian O’Kelly

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership
sok@leaseholdknowledge.com
07808 328230

The post What is LKP? appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Managing agents Rendall and Rittner has “initiated a series of internal and external reviews of our systems and procedures” following the jailing last month of its employee Simon Van Houten, 31, for stealing £122,000 of leaseholder’s funds.

Richard Daver, the managing director of the company, is quoted in today’s Property Week, as saying the company is “confident we have strong procedures in place to prevent a reoccurrence”.

In the same article, which covers the mounting pressure for leasehold reform with the Channel Four Dispatches programme and the CentreForum report, Sebastian O’Kelly of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is reported as saying that the Van Houten case was “to a large extent bad luck for Rendall & Rittner”.

In making the case to stop building more leasehold, O’Kelly said that the law had to go through somersaults to make leasehold fair.

“There’s no other part of civil law where private individuals can compulsorily buy the property of someone else,” he is quoted as saying. “That had to happen [with enfranchisement] to make leasehold work. So that must be telling you something.”

O’Kelly has frequently urged housebuilders to build commonhold tenure, which applies throughout the rest of the world, apart from England and Wales.

The article, by Property Week’s residential correspondent Emma Haslett, also quotes Peter Bolton-King, global residential director at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, criticising Housing Minister Grant Shapps urging a “more proactive approach from the sector” rather than regulation.

“That’s our dear old housing minister’s mantra, isn’t it? The fact is that the government might think the industry can do it, and the industry tries hard. But we can’t turn round to someone who is not a member and is nothing to do with us and start saying, you should be doing this, that and the other.”

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership would dispute that discredited organisations such as ARMA and ARHM made any effort to curb the activities of their own members, several of whom have repeatedly lost cases and received stinging criticism from the Leasehold Valuation Tribunals.

The post Rendall and Rittner ‘confident’ to prevent another Simon Van Houten fraudster appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Fraudster managing agent Simon van Houten, 31, (left) told residents  he had dismissed their caretaker … only for them to discover that the man was still on the payroll two years later. The £32,000 in wages had been secretly paid out of their service charges. This shambles was only one incident at Sunlight Square, which for five years was managed by Van Houten when he was an executive with Rendall and Rittner. In July he was jailed for 30 months at the Old Bailey  for stealing £122,000 out of leaseholders service charges.

He used a bogus decorating company to issue numerous invoices that he then authorised for payment. He used the money to fund a luxury lifestyle in Chelsea, on the proceeds of funds he stole from leaseholders in east London.

Van Houten pleaded guilty before the trial began and as a result there was no evidence presented or cross-examination.

But LKP website reader Kym Turner, 54, an engineering surveyor, has provided an  account of Van Houten’s five-year management of the Sunlight Square development in Bethnal Green, in east London.

“On the face of it he was the nicest man imaginable, and he hated anything like a conflict situation,” said Turner. “But he was also a total crook who fiddled from us for years. I was so happy when I heard that he had been sent to prison, as he had given me months of stress and sleepless nights.”

The most spectacular example of Van Houten’s dishonesty was when the residents decided to sack the existing caretaker and appoint another.

Sunlight Square in Bethnal Green, east London, suffered from the management of Simon van Houten

“We had tried to make this relationship work for two years or so, and it just wasn’t possible. Simon at last said that he would deal with it and after a few months, during which this issue was supposed to have gone to an employment tribunal, Simon told us that the case had been won and the caretaker was dismissed. Then another was appointed.”

It September 2010, before Van Houten’s arrest, Sunlight Square residents replaced Rendall and Rittner as property managers with Hurford Salvi Carr.

“All of a sudden, we had our old caretaker knocking on the door demanding to know why his salary had been stopped. The auditors we called in could not believe that we had been employing two people to do the same job.”

In another incident, Van Houten bungled handling urgent roof repairs, supposedly employing a surveyor.

“We were desperate to get in touch with the surveyor after numerous delays, but Simon kept fobbing us off with excuses. When he did mention a name, we contacted the offices and they said they had never heard of Simon Van Houten or Sunlight Square. He had just made the whole thing up. All the time he lied and lied, making up the most elaborate fantasies. By this point the NHBC (National House-Building Council) warranty was out of date.

“I reckon having our property managed by Simon Van Houten cost us £100,000.”

The residents expressed their suspicions, not least because Van Houten would visit their site in a very expensive smart suit and a flash car. “We all thought there was plenty of money – our money, in fact – to be made from property management.”

Although Kym Turner claims that Rendall and Rittner “were blind” to Van Houten’s faults, he concedes that they did offer twice to replace him as the manager.

The post Having fraudster Simon van Houten manage our flats cost us £100,000 appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Bad luck? This company has been utterly complacent and was so up itself that it believed such things couldn’t happen. They didn’t check out van Houten EVEN WHEN THEY GOT COMPLAINTS so convinced were they of their superiority. He was not properly vetted when hired and then not supervised.

I couldn’t agree more. We were one of the “victims” of Simon Van Houten and our numerous complaints to Duncan Rendall were never properly investigated. It was not until we decided to leave Rendall and Rittner that Van Houtens fiddling became apparent and what probably started Rendall and Rittner looking more closely at what he was up to. To give Rendall and Rittner credit they did compensate us and dealt with the issues (too late), although I still have a nagging doubt on just how much we were frauded in total. This cost me a huge amount of time and anxiety as a director of our block of flats. The irony of this is that we were paying Rendall and Rittner to deal with all our management issues and yet the directors of our development were doing all the managing.

Bad luck? What? Bad luck for Rendall & Rittner that their sloppy accounting procedures no less their refusal to comply with the lease and the law when it suits them – including failure to account properly to lessees for service charge they collect from – means they have been caught with their pants down? I have to agree with Sebastian – jolly bad luck for RR – and even greater bad luck for those of us unfortunate enough to be lumbered with them as managing agent.

When RR is challenged they do offer refunds – with one hand and then, in our case, overcharge three months’ fees with the other. To be fair, they did refund this money, too, but not before it had been through the books and external audit procedure, approved by our flat management company directors to boot – and only brought to their attention by me. What with this and other matters including Van Houten’s non-membership of IRPM which, we heard in court, led to his eventual arrest, I am unpopular in certain quarters.

Modest refunds work for RR. But if they think you are asking for too much – as with our estate management company – then RR resigns. They did the same on the adjacent estate. Interestingly, the high level of service charge arrears’ that RR will leave behind needs to be seen to be believed. If you follow the trail, you will probably find a ‘minute’ somewhere which puts the blame for this ‘black hole’ in the accounts firmly on the RMC directors.

Redrow’s One Commerci Street

It was back to the boom days last night for a champagne reception at the top of the Gherkin tower in the City. The event was hosted by Steve Morgan, legendary founder of Redrow, who was launching his exclusive ONE Commercial Street just to the east of the City.

The apartments are to be managed by Rendall and Rittner, which manages 27,000 units and raises £70 million a year in service charges.

Morgan was happy to give LKP a tour of his new scheme and we discussed the issue of property management, which is not traditionally high on a developer’s agenda.

“After we have sold the units developers don’t usually think much about it, although it obviously carries reputational risk if things go wrong,” he said.

He was interested to hear of LKP’s meetings with other housebuilders and its passion to get a consumer-oriented approach into property management, as well as LKP’s accreditation process.

In other words: straight dealing, transparency and not having a laugh with stealth charges and sneaky commissions. England and Wales offer uniquely rich pickings here because, alone in the world, they retain leasehold tenure, which puts homeowners – or tenants, as leaseholders are in law – in a permanent position of vulnerability.

There were plenty of Far Eastern potential buyers at last night’s do, and estate agents will admit that it is a hurdle to get them to lay down £1 million plus for an apartment and then be told that they are just tenants. They go along with it in London because they have a general faith in English law and realise it is the local way of doing things.

But they don’t like it at all, and they would like it a good deal less if they were aware of the scandals surrounding the property management of high-end London sites, as revealed in LVT rulings.

LKP suggested to Rob Perrins, MD of Berkeley Homes, that buyers at its new site in Kensington High Street would probably be only too happy to pay a little more for commonhold – if it meant avoiding the time-consuming hassles with property management and the freeholder experienced by residents at St George’s Wharf or Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

It is a new departure for Redrow to build luxury flats in London, and another large scheme is being built at Kingston, in Surrey.

LKP has discussed the issue of leasehold management with the chief executives of Berkeley Homes, Barratt, Persimmon and Bellway.

The post Redrow boss Steve Morgan talks to LKP appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

After the £1 million fiasco at St George Wharf, new managing agent wins an award!

Last September, the Berkeley Group paid out £1 million to residents at the landmark St George Wharf (left), in Vauxhall, who had complained of loaded service charges, inter-company contracts and inflated insurance contracts.

Nine months on, the new managing agent Rendall and Rittner wins the Property Week Resi Award for “property manager of the year” at a black tie dinner in central London last night.

Many congratulations to them, for having cleaned out those particularly whiffy augean stables … and commiserations to LKP-accredited managing agent JJ Homes, who made the short-list.

The post St George’s under new management appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

An executive with managing agents Rendall and Rittner pleaded guilty on Monday to stealing £122,000 from his employers’ accounts.

Simon van Houten, 31, from Southend in Essex, used bogus company invoices to scam the company, which manages some of the most prestigious residential buildings in London.

Van Houten, a parish councillor at Paglesham, carried out the fraud over two years before he was rumbled.

He pleaded guilty just before the trial began at the Old Bailey on Monday, and is now awaiting sentencing on July 26.

The case is a reverse for Rendall and Rittner, which has been on a roll this year. It recently won the management of several prestige developments for the Berkeley Group and Redrow’s One Commercial Street, just east of the City. It also manages the upmarket eco resort the Lower Mill Estate in the Cotswolds.

Only last month Rendall and Rittner won a Property Week Resi award for turning round St George’s Wharf, built by the Berkeley Group, where residents received £1 million last September in settlement for over-charging. The complaints occurred when the site was under previous management.

The company, which is FSA regulated, is run by ex-barrister Duncan Rendall, a former chairman of ARMA, and Matt Rittner.

The post Executive guilty of plundering £122,000 from managing agents Rendall and Rittner appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Simon van Houten can expect ‘custodial’ sentence next week

The property management company Rendall and Rittner has made a statement to LKP about its former executive Simon van Houten, 31, who faces jail next week after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 at the Old Bailey.

A spokesman for the company said: “Mr Van Houten abused the trust of both clients and colleagues. Rendall and Rittner Limited immediately reimbursed the small number of clients involved and we are delighted that the police have successfully prosecuted the case we presented to them in 2010 and that justice has now been done.”

Scroll down for full report

The post Van Houten abused trust of clients and colleagues, says Rendall and Rittner appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Simon van Houten, who was paid a £42,000 salary, used East London leasehold accounts to pay for a “life beyond his means” in Chelsea

Simon van Houten, 31, was given a 30-month prison sentence at the Old Bailey this afternoon after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 from leasehold service charge accounts held by London managing agent Rendall and Rittner.

Van Houten carried out the fraud for two years between 2008 and 2010 by issuing invoices for a bogus maintenance company, “London Decorating Services”, which he subsequently approved and paid.

Thirty payments were made with amounts varying from £2,100 to £7,300. VAT was also added, with Van Houten using the VAT number he had lifted from a legitimate company.

By plundering the accounts of 1,400 units under his management in east London, Van Houten was able to live the high life, “beyond his means”, in Chelsea. Although the fraudster did not use the cash for any single large purchase, none of the money has been recovered.

In addition, the court was told he had a £35,000 debt with his bank.

The Old Bailey was told that suspicions were roused when it was discovered that Van Houten was not a qualified Member of the Institute of Residential Property Managers, as he claimed.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership has already reported that this information was revealed to Rendall and Rittner in August 2010 by Susan Stuckey, a leaseholder at the Mill Quay Estate, in east London.

In October Van Houten left the company after being confronted by director Duncan Rendall about the invoices, none of which were approved by other members of the firm. The fraudster was subsequently arrested in January 2011.

Rendall and Rittner has reimbursed the funds plundered from the accounts.

“This was a serious fraud,” said Recorder Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, who noted that Van Houten effectively tripled his £42,000 salary during the two years of his crime.

“The ultimate victims were tenants of the buildings you managed where you syphoned off the funds. This loss has been shouldered by your employer, although it may be covered by insurance, but we do not know.

“For more than two years you were prepared to expose tenants to the loss of £60,000 a year,” said Sir Geoffrey, who is celebrated for prosecuting former Yugoslavian premier Slobodan Milošević at The Hague war crimes trial. “You did this to live an expensive lifestyle in West London, although I note that all the testimonials to your character are from the eastern part of the city.”

Duncan Rendall and Matt Rittner in public gallery

Van Houten, a parish councillor at Paglesham near Southend, offered little in mitigation beyond his involvement in community events in Essex, which included volunteering to paint the local pub.

Van Houten is to serve 15 months in prison and 15 months on release under licence.

Both Duncan Rendall and Matt Rittner, the directors of the firm were in the public gallery to hear the sentence, as were Susan Stuckey and other Rendall and Rittner leaseholders.

Members of Van Houten’s family wept after the sentence was read out.

Outside the court, Stuckey said: “It is now up to Rendall and Rittner to demonstrate what steps it will take to prevent this crime from happening again.”

The post Fraudster managing agent gets 30 months jail for using East Londoners’ cash to fund high life in Chelsea appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership exists to protect ordinary leaseholders from being fleeced by landlords and their agents. They exploit the many opportunities offered by this flawed form of property tenure.

The LKP seeks to identify and accredit property managing agents who sign up to open accounting and straight dealing.

They charge a clear fee for property management – often on behalf of the residents’ own management companies – and do not pocket commissions offered by insurers, energy companies and assorted service providers.

In short, they don’t collude with others to cheat the residents, which is particularly depressing to encounter with the elderly in retirement developments.

To be accredited, LKP managing agents must sign up to a 35-point accreditation process, and residents in the blocks they manage are selected at random to provide references.

LKP also provides an editorial service for leaseholders.

Leasehold is a murky little corner of residential property, but with 1.8 million leaseholders and £3 billion a year spent on service charges there is huge scope to cheat unsuspecting homeowners.

Redress is complicated and expensive and, if you lose, all the freehold landlord’s legal expenses – barristers are now routinely used in LVTs – can be reclaimed in the service charges.

The trade bodies involved in property management – the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA), the Association of Retirement Housing Managers (ARHM) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) – have been well aware of abuses in leasehold management for years.

They all have codes of practice that are feeble and discretionary, and that have well attested loopholes – even RICS, which is the only serious professional body among them.

Following numerous leasehold scandals – often involving ARMA and ARHM members – they now parrot “transparency” and demand regulation. Previously they were silent, and neither ARMA nor ARHM has ever publicly expelled a member.

LKP is also lobbying for legislative change in leasehold, particularly to regulate managing agents who control vast sums of money without any supervision. We have instigated debates in both the Commons and the Lords on these issues.

Of course, the ideal solution to leasehold is to stop building any more of it, and instead to build commonhold – which is what applies in the rest of the world, outside England and Wales.

There is a mass of information on this site and we hope it is useful.

We welcome inquiries from ordinary leaseholders and have a network of supporters and sympathisers who have dealt with everything from £500,000 LVT bust-ups, to contested Right To Manage applications.

LKP provides no services for which there are charges. It is funded by the accreditation of participating managing agents.

Sebastian O’Kelly

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership
sok@leaseholdknowledge.com
07808 328230

The post What is LKP? appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Managing agents Rendall and Rittner has “initiated a series of internal and external reviews of our systems and procedures” following the jailing last month of its employee Simon Van Houten, 31, for stealing £122,000 of leaseholder’s funds.

Richard Daver, the managing director of the company, is quoted in today’s Property Week, as saying the company is “confident we have strong procedures in place to prevent a reoccurrence”.

In the same article, which covers the mounting pressure for leasehold reform with the Channel Four Dispatches programme and the CentreForum report, Sebastian O’Kelly of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is reported as saying that the Van Houten case was “to a large extent bad luck for Rendall & Rittner”.

In making the case to stop building more leasehold, O’Kelly said that the law had to go through somersaults to make leasehold fair.

“There’s no other part of civil law where private individuals can compulsorily buy the property of someone else,” he is quoted as saying. “That had to happen [with enfranchisement] to make leasehold work. So that must be telling you something.”

O’Kelly has frequently urged housebuilders to build commonhold tenure, which applies throughout the rest of the world, apart from England and Wales.

The article, by Property Week’s residential correspondent Emma Haslett, also quotes Peter Bolton-King, global residential director at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, criticising Housing Minister Grant Shapps urging a “more proactive approach from the sector” rather than regulation.

“That’s our dear old housing minister’s mantra, isn’t it? The fact is that the government might think the industry can do it, and the industry tries hard. But we can’t turn round to someone who is not a member and is nothing to do with us and start saying, you should be doing this, that and the other.”

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership would dispute that discredited organisations such as ARMA and ARHM made any effort to curb the activities of their own members, several of whom have repeatedly lost cases and received stinging criticism from the Leasehold Valuation Tribunals.

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