… Beside most whinging leaseholders are buy-to-let investors
Full marks to Mainstay for making the most nakedly self-interested submission to MP members of the Community Select Committee.
Mainstay is a property management company, but also invests in residential freeholds.
It says: “Our customer base of some 80,000 flatted leaseholders suggest that 58% are owned by buy to let investors, 44% are owner-occupied.”
Mainstay adds: “We think that very careful thought needs to be given before leasehold is abandoned. Leasehold is a system that can be made to work extremely well for the leasehold owner with appropriate reform.”
“We consider that the beneficial role of the institutional corporate investor has been ignored in this debate … These modern owners care deeply about customer service, fairness and the health and safety of their customers.”
Question: Why is it leaseholders, sorry enforced customers, can only with difficulty break free of these paragons, and face an deeply unbalanced legal cost regime in any financial dispute?
“These typically have valuable high-profile reputations which drives out fairness [sic] and good consumer outcomes. They also see their interest in buildings as being very long term in contrast to the relatively short period of the average leasehold ownership.”
Question: If the ground rent game involves only respectable pension investors – it doesn’t: no major pension fund has really significant investment in it, according to the Bank of England – why are they hiding their beneficial ownership behind nominee directors and so often offshore?
Full submission here:
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I’m shocked Mainstay want to keep the gravy train running…..I mean if you got money for nothing then you’d do the same right?
The greed of these lot is unbelievable and the way they bought these money for nothing ground rents is disgusting.
Leasehold is not fit for purpose and needs to go! You got greedy and woke everyone up. It’s not just ground rents the whole system is flawed and shouldn’t exist in this day and age.
From the way the government and Law Commission are handling this I am not holding my breath for any meaningful reform of the sector.
It should be clear to everybody that this government doesn’t represent or have any empathy with leaseholders, quite the opposite.
As for hidden investors, if they won’t clear things up for election funding they certainly aren’t going to for leasehold
I’ve recently had to take my own action to remove my doubling ground rent.
Does this solve all my leasehold problems, no of course it doesn’t, but it’s one less thing for me and my dependents to worry about.
If I waited for meaningful reform or compensation, both of which I believe are highly appropriate to those of us who have been cynically exploited by developers, freeholders and conveyancing professionals I would almost certainly be six feet under at my age.
In the latest round of consultation he fact that these charlatans not only seek to justify their behaviour but argue they’re a force for good sums up modern England and Wales (Scotland and NI having more civilized arrangements).
I note that the Labour party seems to be taking the issue more seriously but there are shed loads of bridges to cross if and when they are in a position to act.
In the meantime, I shall continue hope for the best but expect the worst, as I don’t wish further disappointment to blight my mental health.
Government supports corporate`s and investors institutions over the individual citizen in this country. although it is the individual who votes them into office. This is proven time again in finance particularly – pension scandals, endowments, equity release and more recently the financial crash and payday loans.
If we get a full Brexit with a right wing nonce in charge, it will get far worse. If anyone thinks the Rees-Muggs, Boris Johnsons and Ian Duncan-Shite`s will want the end of this tyrannical, feudal nonsense of leasehold gone they are very confused. Except, we see working class families holding these types in high esteem just because of Brexit policy. Astounding.
Don’t want to get too political Chris, but large corporate interests, big banks and unnecessary austerity caused people to vote for Brexit away from London. Mass immigration, changing communities, moving factories overseas. Some parts of Wales and North of England not recovered from loss of industry in the early 1980s, so great social and economic problems. People in these areas, Greece and south of Italy associate the EU with large corporate interests and banks, not the ordinary citizen.
The slave owners probably said to MPs at the time “We are giving these people food and shelter, they would not survive without us, we are kind and caring !” Defending the indefensible, same as yesterday.
I have commented before that leasehold is but one of many social evils alive and well in 21st century UK, and many of these evils are greater than leasehold. In one post I said it is difficult to get really angry about leasehold because of these other (and often greater) evils.
Chris, in his post above, summed it all up – governments are elected by the people, and then shit on the people. I am a (green) socialist by instinct, but not partisan, this Labour Party would be much more likely to act against leasehold, but in general Labour politicians are no different to Conservative politicians. Right across the political divide there are a few decent types, the rest (red and blue) are scum. Crispin Blunt, Conservative, stands out to me as a decent type, his contribution to a recent consultation was remarkable, and absolutely spot on.