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Housing is a field of such complexity and so many vested interests that the gaps between promises and performance are paralleled only in promises of eternal life. We promise to shift the main weight of building from green to brownfield sites. But can`t. We promise to make house buying easier by the kind of seller survey purchase pack I proposed in my House Buyers` Bill in 1983.
Then drop the idea in the face of the outcry from professions whose vested interests and fees are endangered. We promise to deal with the grievances of the two million leaseholders then the Ducal opposition, the plaints of the property companies and the vested interests of landlords stop us.
The first Leaseholders (Facilities Fee Simple) Bill was defeated in 1884. 31 Bills on leasehold reform have been introduced since. Only two passed. The Conservative government proposed Commonhold for flats in 1987. The first Bill was stopped by the 1992 general election. It re-appeared in 1996, then lost because of another general election. Labour took up the burden in 2000 then failed because of yet another general election. Now the Schwarzenegger Bill is back. It has his bulk in 75 pages of explanatory notes but not his strength.
The Leasehold Bill is a timorous mouse of a proposal. It won`t achieve Commonhold for existing flat tenants. It promises new rights to leaseholders but doesn`t deliver because vested interests have pulled its teeth before it even reached Parliament on the third way principle that Labour should never do anything to damage them. One squeeze. We cave in.
Commonhold is a sensible idea for leasehold flats though it requires leaseholders to form a company to do what`s done elsewhere by condominiums. Yet leasehold is allowed to live on in new flats and an impossible 100% unanimity is necessary. So Commonhold will come in only for new build and there only if it suits the needs and purposes of landlords who make profits from lease extensions
For the million people in leasehold houses it offers nothing. In the North large areas of industrial housing was built on land owned by local members of the aristocracy. They graciously bestowed their names, took the ground rents each year, and did nothing. Since ground rents were low, no-one bothered much. Few even took up their rights under Labour`s brave (but again so long delayed) Leasehold Enfranchisement Act of 1967.
In the last two decades all has changed. Peers pulled out, benign freeholderism ended and tens of thousands of freeholds were bought up by property companies as a money-making proposition. They used every device they could to increase revenue on their investment by ground rent grazing. Lawyers trawled through the old leases to squeeze every drop out. They increased charges for permission to build, improve or make additions such as garages, often demanded at crucial points such as sale so people coughed up. They demanded that leaseholders take out insurance with companies nominated by them, from which they presumably have some kick-back arrangement. They upped the price claimed for freehold. In worse case scenarios they exercise their right of forfeiture for arrears of ground rent, a drastic penalty often used as extortion. The law immediately backs it despite the disproportionate suffering.
In the South, and with shorter leases, different problems apply, crucially the noose tightening of expiring leases giving leverage for increasing freehold prices, the use of embellishments such as “marriage rights”(on the added value of joining property and land together) and the failure of the whole process to take into account the householders investment of time, effort and lives in a building they are threatened with losing.
Add to this the failure to deal with some of the problems and crude frauds, leasehold flesh is heir to: failures to do basic or adequate maintenance, to pay the insurance premiums or dodgy accounting of costs and charges, and it`s clear that a great opportunity is not just lost but thrown away in a Bill which does little for the vulnerable and nothing to swing the balance of power from big freeholders to little leaseholders. Just another wasted housing opportunity in the everyday story of housing folk. |
