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I must have been a good son because I remember my father telling me only two things, one of which was always buy freehold. Alas, urban animal that I am, I am breaking that rule for the first time. Mid-life family rearrangements mean I need to move house; I want to stay in central London, and here, a freehold is out of reach.
Leaseholds make me nervous. I know too much — as an architect I often advise owners of leasehold flats in London, or the freeholder companies that have the responsibility to maintain them. Aside from the general lack of control leaseholders in the UK have over large chunks of financial responsibility, particularly maintenance costs, there are some specific pits into which you can fall.
Most alarming to me right now is the new set of regulations covering tall residential buildings. These regulations kick in if there is a residential floor more than 18m above ground level, which as well as tower blocks carries with it numerous other less obvious buildings such as mansion blocks, blocks where an extra floor has been added to take them above the limit, and mixed-use blocks with flats on the upper floors. The regulations have been brought in for good reason: the Grenfell disaster, the final report on which has recently been published. They are stringent regulations.
Alterations to flats generally need Building Control approval in the UK, and that approval is normally given by local authorities or a private company. No longer with tall buildings: there is a new Building Safety Regulator that must be used. First surprise: when you apply, they do not quote you a fee. Instead, there is an open-ended by-the-hour charge of £144. That makes it hard to budget for. If anything isn’t exactly as asked for (such as application drawings), it’ll cost you.
Second surprise: when you apply, all products and materials must be decided in advance. If not, they will send the application back, and again the price clock will be ticking.
Third surprise: if things have to change, they must be informed in advance, and require six weeks to make their decision, during which time no building work can proceed. All this adds up to delays, complication and, above all, expense. And that expense kicks in both if you are doing the work on your flat, or if the freeholder has to do work to the outside of the building — for which you will, of course, pay.
I decided to avoid tall buildings.
What about a trendy warehouse conversion? These were often done in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Manhattan loft craze came in. I have worked on a number of these, mostly helping to repair the problems caused by lack of building control oversight. Even 20 years later the residents are paying out of their own pockets to solve the issues arising from shoddy construction.
The main issue leaseholders face is that the responsibility for ongoing maintenance rests with them, even if that involves making good the mistakes that were made by the original developer.
A draft leasehold and commonhold reform bill, initially proposed by the previous government and under consideration by the current, proposes to outlaw the sale of new leaseholds in favour of commonhold tenure. But the new legal framework is to be confirmed — I have my reservations about how impactful this will be, if maintenance costs to repair historic problems are ultimately still billed to the commonholder.
That put paid to my warehouse dreams.
Next stop was considering a Georgian or Edwardian house converted to flats. What character! In theory. But many conversions are poorly done. I recently rented one of these. No sound insulation between floors. No, I do not like sharing my neighbour’s shower at 2am, aurally. Plumbing up the spout. Run the kitchen sink and the bathroom stank for 10 minutes. And this was £4,000 a month in Primrose Hill. I hear it said that if you buy leasehold in a conversion, you often get the benefit of a share of the freehold. That “benefit” needs scare quotes — the chances of all three or four leaseholders in a typical conversion agreeing on how to spend their combined money is surely no more than 50 per cent (particularly if they have been listening in too much detail to each other in the shower).
My options were running out. And I haven’t even mentioned the nightmares of unsaleable flats with flammable cladding. Nor the friend who, having purchased in a council block, got landed with a £30,000 bill for external refurbishment.
My least-worst option has been to buy in a council block, with minimal ground rent. That may sound counter-intuitive, but I love the 1950s style, the huge windows, and, practically, most of the properties are rented, which means that the council is not incentivised to make bold, costly renovations as they will foot a chunk of the bill. And this one is built like your proverbial brick outhouse. Nonetheless, please wish me luck.
Tim Gough is an architect at Austin Winkley & Associates; he formerly taught architecture at Kingston University for 20 years
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