Featured Articles

The head of property management at Sheffield’s Taylor&Emmet LLPis receiving international industry recognition for her professionalism and outstanding performance.  Cassandra Zanelli has won “Best Residential Property Litigator – UK” at the inaugural BUILD Real Estate and Property Awards, announced last week.  The accolades celebrate people and firms whose responsibility it is to shape and steer the property industry worldwide. Cassandra was selected as best litigator in the UK by a panel of experts based

The shorter your lease - the less valuable your property may be. Not only will your property become less valuable but there is also likely to be difficulty in being able to sell it or obtain a mortgage on it. However, if you keep an eye on the remaining term then you can quite easily maximise your investment. It is possible to protect the value of your property by extending your lease. The cost of extending your lease and protecting your interest increases as your lease terms ticks away. It is therefore v

There's a lot of discussion about how best to manage mixed tenure buildings and this is intensifying as Housing Association landlords increasingly find themselves in charge of buildings with widely differing tenures and a broader range of expectations. In the HA movement we’re rapidly moving away from our traditional role of providing social rented and shared ownership homes. This trend will develop faster if current government policy towards grant funding continues (it’s now marginal in London). A key ch

It's simple. If there are arrears on the service charge account, then this means no cash to spend on managing and maintaining the building. If there is no cash to spend on the property, then the managing agent cannot spend what the building does not have. If the property manager does not spend on management and maintenance, then this means more people do not pay. But the situation can get much worse than that. If the property manager has not incurred expenditure, there will be an accounting surplus when t

A common bone of contention between landlords and tenants is the extent to which a landlord can recover costs of improvements to the building from tenants through the service charge. The answer is not always clear cut. The starting point is always the terms of the lease – does the lease allow the landlord to recharge the cost of improvements through the service charge? If not, and the landlord’s right to recover costs is limited to repair and maintenance, it is unlikely that the costs of an improvement, i

As we all know, when a leaseholder breaches a covenant under the Lease, usually a covenant relating to the payment of ground rent or service charge, the ultimate sanction held by the Landlord and/or the management company is that of forfeiture. For that reason it is critical that, while debt recovery proceedings are taking place, no steps are taken which could waive the right to forfeit. Potentially, anything which takes place after the breach arises which indicates that there is a continuing lease could

It is no great secret that many leases are, by any objective view, defective. If for example the computation of service charge in respect of the proportion paid by each lessee does not add up to or is more than 100% - the lease is essentially defective and leaves a scenario where the landlord is either making up the shortfall or recovering more than what has actually been paid out.    There are many reasons why a lease fails to make satisfactory provision for the computation of service charges. This inclu

Sheffield’s Taylor&Emmet LLP is adding three new faces to its property management team to meet rising demand from clients across the UK.  A solicitor and two paralegals are joining partner, Cassandra Zanelli, to meet increasing interest in the firm’s advice for landlords, property agents and leaseholders.    Specialist solicitor, Liz Rowen, will be handling complex litigation cases in both the First-tier Tribunal and county court, dealing with issues such as insurance arrears and breach of leases.    She

Service Charges are close to the hearts of many of us working in the property management industry. They are the lifeblood of any development. Payments are made by leaseholders to the landlord in exchange for services and it is a reciprocal relationship - many landlords are not-for-profit resident management companies, for whom service charges are their only source of income. The services landlords are required to provide, such as repairs, cleaning, insurance and management, can only be undertaken when lea

It can be tiresome to keep repeating the phrase “read the lease”. But that does not make it any less correct. In Clacy v Sanchez [2015], the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) considered the contractual procedures for the recovery of service charges, which fall to be observed under the terms of a lease. We saw the importance of following the contractual mechanism for recovery in Southwark L.B. v Woelke [2013], where the landlord had billed service charges for major works separately from routine or annually re

From the date it acquires management, a RTM Company has the right to step into the existing landlord’s shoes under the terms of the leases in order to collect service charges from the leaseholders. However, in some circumstances a RTM Company might find it is unable to recover historic service charge arrears and other costs leading to a serious hole in its budget. When a RTM Company acquires the Right to Manage, it is entitled to all of the service charges held by the landlord in the service charge accoun

Terms and Conditions, management agreements, terms of appointment: call them what you will; without a written agreement in place with your RMC client, you are leaving yourself open to unnecessary levels of risk. We come across many different forms of terms and conditions but, surprisingly, we find that a considerable proportion of blocks are managed without any kind of written agreement. And this isn’t just a problem for the smaller managing agents. Without terms of appointment, you are effectively acting