Clare Brady

When acting for an RMC or Right to Manage Company, managing agents will often be told by the freeholder to allow them to deal with the service charge arrears. The benefits of such an approach are clear from the ground rent owner’s perspective, but is it in the best interests of the management company, the leaseholders and the block?  With ground rent recovery increasingly in the spotlight, both managing agents and freeholders must take care to ensure recovery procedures are legal, in line with the terms o

Better leasehold education and improvements on how managing agents communicate with leaseholders are urgently required if the sector is to provide a long-term solution to the UK’s housing needs. Those are the findings of the first-ever independent national survey of the sector. With two-thirds (65%) of leaseholders taking part in the survey saying they would welcome more information on their rights, options and obligations, policymakers have been given a clear indication that improvements are needed.

From your perspective as the managing agent, you need to take care that you are not being led by the freeholder’s agenda When acting for an rmc, managing agents will often be asked by their landlord and its legal advisers to combine the ground rent debt with the service charge arrears. There are clear advantages to the landlord of this approach but it can cause problems for the RMC – and a potentially dangerous conflict of interest for the managing agent. Managing agents should consider carefully the impl

It is a common woe of many managing agents: modern blocks are becoming more complicated to manage. Leaseholders are increasingly sophisticated and demanding and yet there is a persistent downward pressure on service charges and management fees. But professionalism and quality rarely sit comfortably with squeezed fees. Professionalism can be defined as performing a job to high standards, to adhering to standards of courtesy, honesty and responsibility, to acting in your clients’ best interests, and to goi

As the new FTT system has bedded in, the FTT has embraced the new wasted costs rule and has been quite proactive with its powers. Under the old LVT rules, the maximum costs order was £500, which was arguably little deterrent to the vexatious litigant. On July 1, however the LVT in England became a First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), and brought with it a new set of powers - of which one of the most significant is the tribunal’s ability to make an unlimited wasted costs order against anyone that it fe

ARMA-Q is the new self-regulatory regime for ARMA managing agents. In the words of ARMA: ‘It aims to raise standards and quality of service across the residential leasehold management sector - hence the ‘Q’ for quality. ARMA-Q places consumers at its heart.’ If we look back to Brady Solicitors’ survey of over 100 managing agents (‘Raising the Bar’, published December 2012), we are reminded of an open-armed welcome for regulation, with 98 percent broadly in favour and 52 percent believing regulation to b