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QUESTION Can I put wooden floors in my apartment? ANSWER  Wooden flooring in apartment blocks is a significant issue at the moment as they have become a desirable feature for style-conscious apartment residents. It is very important that you check the lease for your apartment as an initial step. Normally, it is common to find a clause in the lease which forbids wooden flooring altogether except for the bathroom and kitchen areas. The reason for this is to protect your neighbours from excess

QUESTION  We have recently purchased the freehold in our block. Where can we find more information about the management and running of a block? ANSWER  There are several good sources of information you may like to investigate further. If you have not already done so, you may like to consider joining the Federation of Private Residents Associations. The FPRA are a not-for-profit advice, support and lobbying organisation for private residential leaseholders, tenants' and residents' associations, and r

Long gone are the days when landlords resisted the very idea of enfranchisement and the Duke of Westminster took a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. Some landlords still safeguard their freeholds by granting only short leases or ensuring the number of rented flats in a block prevents the long leaseholders from qualifying. But successive tranches of legislation have persuaded most that the sale of their freeholds is inevitable - major players like the Cadogan Estate are now diversifying into

“There is not, and has never been, a binding convention that a fixed and constant deferment rate of 6% should be universally used. The deferment rate in each case must be individually determined on the evidence” This was Judge Rich QC’s ruling in five appeal cases heard together last year. The decision in – Arbib v Earl Cadogan has rocked leasehold valuation markets. What is the Deferment Rate? To enfranchise, lessees must pay a sum representing the aggregate of three elements: value of the free

Flat-owners should be thinking now about the implications of Home Information Packs (or the ‘seller’s pack’, as they used to be known). You’re aware from the extensive, and generally hostile, media coverage that HIPs will be a fact of life from July next year and that anyone wishing to market a flat after that time will have to produce one. Because of the nature of their property title the burden of HIPs will fall much more heavily on flat-owners: there is so much more information to be provided. So why t

I am sitting on a plane in New York waiting to disembark on the 10th August. You may recall this is the day after 20 people wanting to blow up planes to the States were arrested on terrorist charges. Gatwick was chaos and all the ground staff were doing their best, but one thing would have made their lives easier and that is communicating information – even if it was there was nothing new to tell. The departure gate was bombarded by people asking, “when are we boarding?” With regular tannoy announcements

Over the last twenty years, the private residential retirement housing market has steadily developed, as more people have realised the benefits of this type of accommodation and due to an increasingly ageing population. Keith Edgar analyses the benefits of managed retirement housing. With 20 million people in the UK currently in retirement and a shortage of retirement homes, there is a huge demand for tailor-made housing for the over 75s. This age group is desperately seeking suitable and available retir

In recent years, the jurisdictions of the Government-sponsored Residential Property Tribunal Service (RPTS) have expanded dramatically. Senior President of the service, Siobhan McGrath, explains the organisation’s new powers to News on the Block, and looks to the future. The RPTS provides an independent, fair and accessible tribunal service for settling residential disputes between landlords, leaseholders, tenants and local authorities. The Committees and Tribunals operated by the service are quasi-judi

In a complex piece of government regulation, thousands of homes converted into self-contained flats could become unmanageable and open up lessees to fines of up to £20,000 from October 2006. During the building boom of the 70s and 80s many thousands of houses, whether terraced, semi-detached or detached, were converted into self-contained flats, the majority of which were then sold on long leases. An obscure section (S257) of the Housing Act 2004 is likely to make these Houses in Multiple Occupation (

The Housing Ombudsman Service was set up under the provisions of the 1996 Housing Act to deal with complaints and disputes involving member landlords. Under the law, the Ombudsman has a mandatory remit over all registered social landlords in England and a voluntary remit over private landlords. There is no charge at the point of complaint for using the Housing Ombudsman service. The Service is funded by a subscription, which at the present time is £1.15 per unit owned or managed by a member landlord. All

EXCLUSIVE REVIEW The Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA) celebrated its first decade of annual conferences on November 2nd at the appropriately grand setting of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, Savoy Place, London. It is the only real time for members from all over the UK – as well hundreds of other delegates with an interest in the leasehold sector - to come together and hear not only about ARMA’s plans for the future, but to discuss the residential leasehold sector in general. The

LEASE has come a long way since its inception 10 years ago, something Peter Haler was instrumental in founding after a period of time lobbying the government for a leasehold advice service. LEASE is now a generic leasehold advice service with 20 members of staff. They have provided advice to over 150,000 individual clients and continue to advise at least 30,000 clients every year in addition to the 1,000 visits a day to the LEASE website. Haler is understandably happy at how LEASE has developed, though