News archive

Data tells us sprinklers work, waking watch doesn’t, and freehold punters aren’t picking up the tab, Martin Boyd tells ODI

Shadow housing brief passes from Mike Amesbury to Matthew Pennycook

Time to tell MPs what you think about the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill – and why it must not be nobbled

Hackitt and Knight back dumping unregulated sector-insider ‘building safety managers’ onto leaseholders at £60,000 a year, MPs told

Few disagreements over banning ground rents, but last minute effort to keep them for retirement properties by Theresa Villiers and Sir Desmond Swayne

Lobbying alert: Theresa Villiers MP speaks up for ground rents, freehold owners and making sure marriage value still pays off for freehold investors

LKP accredited managing agent Premier Block Management ‘opens Pandora’s box’ by inviting critical social media reviews

FirstPort faces leasehold rebellion over service charges at St David’s Square

Sir Peter Bottomley calls on ministers to listen to ‘whistleblower’ ex-employees of Richard Davidoff (of ABC Estates)

Property tribunal chamber president Siobhan McGrath says Richard Davidoff has two other section 24 court appointments – ‘as far as I can ascertain’ – and proposes a new practice code to encourage section 24 appointees to behave

Financial Conduct Authority under pressure to force open secretive insurance commissions, so leaseholders can see what they are paying for

Leaseholder and ex-Number 10 advisor to David Cameron issues call for reform of property managers after Richard Davidoff case

Richard Davidoff fails to block right to manage – from a residents’ management company where he is the only director

Israel Moskovitz’s bid to monetise squalid car park back-fires and may cost him over £100,000 at tribunal

New build flat sales volume has fallen 60% and re-sales trail old and new houses

Demonstrations and going to the press – and involving LKP – improved our situation hugely, say Ballymore leaseholders

Sir David Amess, RIP. 1952-2021

Mother and 12-year-old son living on friend’s sofa after eviction from grade 2 listed flat after service charge dispute tops £20,000 with costs

FirstPort buys up Freemont: the property management firm set up by its ousted Politburo

FoPRA dumps Roger Southam as ‘esteemed honorary consultant’. Calls for chair Bob Smytherman to stand down

LKP quits FoPRA as it appoints Roger Southam an ‘esteemed honorary consultant’ – after re-surfacing from the Cayman Islands

Sun shines on the leaseholders’ demo at Parliament: after Jenrick, is this a new dawn?

CMA forces Countryside Properties plc to strike out doubling ground rents: it was selling them as late as May 2017!

Dame Judith Hackitt says cladding leaseholders risk ruin with rip-off charges. She wants to help. But is still at sea over leasehold law …

BBC2 Newsnight special on corrosive leasehold and the building safety crisis … with no minister present at all

Richard Davidoff, of ABC Estates, ‘breached his fiduciary duties’ after disastrous performance as a court-appointed manager, rules property tribunal

FirstPort charges leaseholders 33% commission on temporary staff recruitment

RICS dreams up another feeble ‘code of practice’, as Lord Best’s statutory regulator of property managers falls victim to Covid

Fees come first for FirstPort: leaseholders billed at least £39,000 for applications to the Building Safety Fund … And so it begins

EWS1 on under 18m high buildings … is still an utter mess

Curiouser and curiouser: the Building Safety Bill has Second Reading in the Commons

Blatant pro-landlord loophole left in the Ground Rent Bill. Is this the way leasehold ‘reforms’ will go?

Building Safety Bill: Made by officials. By themselves. Talking to themselves. Will the cogs turn?