90 Days to Change: The Story Behind Levelling Up Leasehold

There are several active groups campaigning to make positive change to leasehold legislation and our aim is to work with these groups, politicians, civil servants and the law commission to effect meaningful change.  A list of these and a description of their activities can be viewed here.

The reason there are so many leasehold reform groups is because leasehold is such a complex and muti-faceted area of the law and affects different parties in different ways.

Levelling up Leasehold has been created by Alan Draper to raise awareness of what leasehold looks like from an industry insider and to effect change that will help both clean up the industry, improve standards and make it more competitive.

The big, hairy ambition is to establish a market allowing leaseholder groups to dismiss a property agent with 90 days’ notice and be able to choose their own agent.

In 2008, I set up my own managing agency as I saw a gap in the market for an agency that was transparent. My only prior experience was via self-management of a site, but I wanted block management done in a way that no other company was offering at the time and so, in effect, I created the service I wanted myself.

I then set about building my business and learning on the job. This included sitting my exams with the Property Institute and it was during my study for the members exam that the penny dropped that the leasehold management market is a function of the legislation that is in place; It is way too biased towards the whims of freeholders and even the laws that purport to protect leaseholders are, more often than not, a cash-cow for freeholders who are almost always able to claim their legal costs back via the leases; No other area of the law allows the losing party to reclaim their costs and some opportunist freeholders (and agents written into leases) use this to actively generate revenues.

In 2017, Sajid Javid proposed that property agents be regulated, and this was followed up by a report published in 2019 by the Regulation of Property Agents (RoPA) Working Group chaired by Lord Best.

Whilst I am broadly in favour of regulating property agents, the way the market is currently structured could make this regulator little more than a toothless figurehead.

In my view, the leaseholder should ALLWAYS be seen as the customer in the context of leasehold management, however, too many leases are constructed in such a way as to render leaseholders powerless to remove poorly performing (or just downright criminal) managing agents and, unless this area of leasehold legislation is changed, freeholder and managing agents will use these very same leases to frustrate the property regulator.

In order to achieve the ultimate goal of a world where agents are 90 days from losing a client will require changes to allow the following:

• A mechanism to remove managing agents embedded into lease agreements (and TPO1’s)
• A mechanism to ensure ALL leaseholder groups get to decide on a manging agent rather than freeholders
• A regulator with real teeth

I am a political pragmatist. I’m more interested in outcomes, competence, accountability and practical reform rather than loyalty to a political tribe and have, in the past voted for Liberal Democrats, Conservative, Labour and the Green Party.

For almost my entire adult life, I have struggled with who to vote for an often liken it to trying to decide which testicle to lope off with a rusty hacksaw.

As such, in my goal to achieve greater powers for leaseholders, I will work with Satan himself (if he weren’t already working for the other camp) to achieve the goals of Levelling up Leasehold.

I both own and run a managing agency and have previously campaigned with my managing agent hat on. However, the day to day of my agency is now run by a general manager and my plan for the agency long term is to transfer a controlling interest to the staff via an Employee Ownership Trust…..I’m proud of what my staff and I have achieved and I’ll not have it gobbled up by an unscrupulous 500lb gorilla who would almost certainly kill what is unique about the business.

In order to keep my political and business activities separate, I’ll make no mention of my managing agency on this website. All the views expressed on this website are my own and do not represent the views of my managing agency or any other businesses where I am a director.