Leasehold Knowledge Partnership

The registered charity for leaseholders

Menu
  • Home
    • Site map
    • Archive of posts by category
  • What is LKP
    • Privacy and Data Protection Statement
    • Site map
  • HELP FORM
  • News
      • APPG
      • ARMA
      • Bellway
      • Benjamin Mire
      • Brixton Hill Court
      • Canary Riverside
      • Charter Quay
      • Chelsea Bridge Wharf
      • Commonhold
      • Communities Select Committee
      • Conveyancing Association
      • Countrywide
      • DCLG
      • E&J Capital Partners
      • Exit fees
      • Fleecehold
      • Forfeiture
      • FPRA
      • Gleeson Homes
      • Ground rent scandal
      • Cladding crisis
      • Hanover
      • House managers flat
      • House of Lords
      • Housing associations
      • Informal lease extension
      • Insurance scams
      • IRPM
      • Jim Fitzpatrick MP
      • John Christodoulou
      • Justin Bates
      • Justin Madders MP
      • Law Commission
      • LEASE
      • Leasehold Valuation Tribunal
      • Local authority leasehold
      • London Assembly
      • Louie Burns
      • Martin Paine
      • McCarthy and Stone
      • Moskovitz / Gurvits
      • Mulberry Mews
      • National Leasehold Campaign
      • Oakland Court
      • OFT / CMA
      • Park Homes
      • Persimmon
      • Peverel
      • Philip Rainey QC
      • Plantation Wharf
      • Prostitutes
      • Quadrangle House
      • Recognised Tenants’ Association
      • Redrow
      • Retirement
      • RICS
      • Right To Manage Federation
      • Roger Southam
      • RTM
      • Sean Powell
      • SFO
      • Sinclair Gardens Investments
      • Sir Ed Davey
      • Sir Peter Bottomley
      • St George’s Wharf
      • Taylor Wimpey
      • Tchenguiz
      • West India Quay
      • William Waldorf Astor
      • Windrush Court
  • Accreditation
    • Accredited Companies
        • Block Managers Limited
        • Clear Building Management
        • Diamond Managing Agents
        • Dixon Emerald Associates
        • HML Group
        • Home from Home
        • Home Management Group
        • JFM Block & Estate Management
        • Jones Associates Letting & Management
        • Norwich Residential Management
        • Premier Block Management
        • Red Rock Property Management
        • Sapphire Property Management
        • Town & City Management
        • Urang Property Management
        • Vestra Property Management
  • Fighting back
      • Lease Extension
      • Q&As
      • Right to buy freehold
      • Commonhold
      • Bottomley blasts leasehold crimes on video
      • LVT/Property Chamber Survival
      • Tribunal triumphs … and defeats
      • Recognised Tenants’ Association
      • Right To Manage
      • Video
      • Find MP … and see how many leasehold voters
      • LEASE: what’s the point?
      • Pensioners win £68,500
      • Most damning LVT ruling ever made
      • Insurance racket
      • Local authority leasehold
      • Remember to extend your lease
      • St George’s wins £1 million
      • Leasehold law: the reforms
  • Sub-letting
  • Press
  • Contact
  • Parliament
      • Communities Select Committee
      • APPG
      • APPG December 14 2016
      • Commons Debate 20/12/16
      • APPG April 19 2017
      • APPG July 5 2017
      • APPG December 14 2016
  • Right To Manage
  • Lease Extension
  • National Leasehold Campaign
    • Louie Burns
    • Ground rent scandal
    • Michael Epstein
  • Donate
You are here: Home / Latest News / Telegraph and Mail attack Nationwide for £54 million ground rent investments

Telegraph and Mail attack Nationwide for £54 million ground rent investments

May 24, 2017 By admin

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail today criticised Nationwide for investing in ground rents after refusing to lend against leasehold properties with onerous terms last week.

The Telegraph refers to a spokesman declining to reveal what proportion of the Nationwide’s investments were escalating ground rents. Nationwide said only that the “vast majority” of the fund’s holdings complied with the new policy.

All “newly sourced deals” would comply, Nationwide confirmed.

The newspaper claimed that the Nationwide position was “reminiscent of the embarrassing revelation” in 2013 that the Church of England had exposure in the payday lender Wonga.

The article can be read here

The Daily Mail pointed out that the Nationwide’s final salary scheme closed to new staff in 2007 and that it set aside £136million to compensate victims of PPI mis-selling and other banking mistakes.

The Daily Telegraph article also referenced the John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust that has been buying up freeholds where the ground rents double.

The freeholds are managed by Estates and Management, the admin branch of the Tchenguiz interests in residential property. These are ultimately controlled by the so-called Tchenguiz Family Trust, based in the British Virgin Islands.

The organisation of this group has been described as “quasi Biblical” in complexity by a property tribunal judge.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership was referenced in the article in connection with the John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, but made no critical comment about Nationwide.

Sebastian O’Kelly, trustee, was quoted saying ground rents were “one of many scams in leasehold tenure”, adding:

“With its high ethical standards, John Lewis should not be investing in ground rent assets which have contributed to so much misery for the unfortunate first time buyers who bought leasehold properties.

“Unfair Britain has never been in such stark relief as over this scandal.”

However, LKP has not criticised Nationwide. Plenty of charities and mutuals invest in ground rents in pension funds, and some are very controversial.

What distinguishes the John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust is that it has been buying up freeholds to leasehold houses where the ground rent doubles.

Asked specifically about Nationwide, Sebastian O’Kelly gave the following comment, which was not published:

“Ground rents are not justified, but they are legal and many pension funds own them.

“Nationwide has done the entire housing market a favour by refusal to lend against leases with the most predatory terms.

“It has certainly done more to clean up the leasehold sector than civil servants and assorted quango hangers-on.

“Cheating leaseholders in this way is now beyond the pale, and it has taken a lender to say it.

“Ordinary people are buying homes; developers and their clever advisors have transformed them into complicated financial instruments to enrich investors.”

Related posts:

Police may need to investigate ground rent scandal, says Bottomley Telegraph reports ‘marketing cobblers’ of 999-year ‘virtual freeholds’ with lethal ground rents Guardian’s Patrick Collinson welcomes Nationwide exploding the ground rent scandal Ground rent strike ‘a very real possibility,’ reports Daily Telegraph Nationwide bans mortgages on doubling ground rent properties

Filed Under: Latest News, News, Press Tagged With: John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, Nationwide, Sebastian O’Kelly, Tchenguiz Family Trust

Contact LKP

Need help?

LKPhelp2The leasehold game is weighted against ordinary home-owning leaseholders, who aren’t professional players. LKP was set up to redress the balance, to help you win your disputes or at least avoid disasters.

If you have a leasehold problem, you can email sok@leaseholdknowledge or take a chance on calling 07808 328 230.

Or fill out this form, which ensures that you provide the essential information.

LKPnewsletter3

Professional services

The following advertisements are from firms that seek business from leaseholders. Click on the logos for company profiles.

Law

Right to manage

Lease extension / enfranchisement


capitalleasehold6-9ins

Insurance

Landscaping

limetree

LKP Managing Agents

Big managing agents are big because they have got business from developers or large-scale freehold owing companies. Doubtless they are very obliging.

Not a single one is big through consumer choice.

Managing agents accredited to LKP want business from leaseholders. Many are former leaseholders.

All have signed undertakings of good practice and have provided extensive references … from leaseholders.

They can also hand-hold leaseholders through right to manage at minimal cost.

Contact Sebastian O’Kelly at LKP for further details: sok@leaseholdknowledge.com, 07808 328 230

Please click on logos for link and details

Comments

  1. David & Edna Wallis says

    June 5, 2017 at 2:09 pm

    I purchased an apartment from Taylor Wimpey in 2007, which at that time was almost “Off Plan” as it was still an empty space. Also at that time TW was very short of funds and was selling their properties at any price, provided it was a cash sale.

    I purchased my apartment after being offered £12,000 extras for free. Another lady purchased an apartment in the same block as me for £44,000 under the sales price, which was made by sealed bid tender.

    At this time it now appears that TW came up with the money making scheme of escalating the ground rent, doubling it every 10 years. Making it attentive to an outside investor, selling it on at a considerable extra profit for themselves.

    Since 2007 the Freehold has been sold on twice, the last one within the last 6 months, to take advantage of the first doubling of the ground rent to £500, on the 1st January 2017.

    I don’t expect to get any money back, but I would like to have a Deed of Variation, whereby the ground Rent would remain at the present £500 and then drop down to a Pepper Corn, thereafter.

    I am hoping that Peter Redfern, the CEO of Taylor Wimpey well cooperate.

    Ps: – We love the development. and hope it can be affordable, as time goes by?

LKPnewsletter3

Tweets by @LKPleasehold

Essential reads

  • Sir Peter Bottomley
  • Martin Paine
  • Roger Southam
  • LKP full archive
  • Most damning LVT ruling ever made
  • Pensioners win £68,500
  • Benjamin Mire
  • Moskovitz / Gurvits
  • Plantation Wharf
  • Peverel Cirrus story so far
  • Sean Powell
  • Tchenguiz
  • West India Quay
  • Essential guide to lease extensions
  • Forfeiture
  • Press
  • Right to manage and taking control

News archive

Leaseholders and freeholder of evacuated Manchester block win £10.8m insurer payout for ‘serious defects’

By Harry Scoffin A freeholder and his leaseholders secured victory at the Court of Appeal last week, with the insurer ordered to pay a £10.8m bill for works to make a Manchester development safe. Although the faults pre-date Grenfell, it is the first court case win for private leaseholders over safety and structural defects since […]

Donations to LKP will be doubled by PayPal through December (up to £1,000 per donor)

LKP moved its charitable donation provider in the summer when BTdonate came to an end. We now only use PayPal as a portal. You can make a donation here We do so as many other charitable payment portals charge quite high fees. Throughout December PayPal is prepared to match any donation to LKP up to […]

Leaseholder of £3m pad in central London demands £100 a day off Gerald Ronson for no internet  

By Harry Scoffin A millionaire travel tycoon has marched his freeholder to court over a failure to provide internet to his luxury flat in The Heron, Barbican. Stephen Shalson, 70, moved into the apartment in London’s Square Mile in February 2014 and claims he had to endure “about a thousand days” of non-service. He says […]

Cladding site? Come to parliamentary meeting on January 9 … and get your MP to attend as well

[The response form had a glitch. Now fixed] By Sebastian O’Kelly LKP director The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is holding a parliamentary meeting at Westminster on January 9 at 5pm to address the cladding crisis. It is clear to LKP – and should be to officials and ministers – that thousands of flat owners living in […]

LKP trustee Professor James Driscoll dies

LKP sadly announces the death of one of its trustees, Professor James Driscoll. James was a solicitor, an academic, an author and a mediator. For eleven years he sat as a judge on the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). Siobhan McGrath, President of the Property Chamber said that “James had been a talented and popular Judge […]

Does Li Ka-shing own your Adriatic freehold, or Hutchison Whampoa, or billionaire Frank Sixt, or Astor? Only Long Harbour knows, and it’s not saying …

The secretive Long Harbour fund came under further scrutiny today, with an article in The Times on leasehold house owners in the north-west mounting a collective challenge for their freeholds. But who owns these freeholds, where the beneficial ownership is hidden behind nominee directors of a company secretary group headquartered in Jersey? Families challenge Long […]

Families challenge Long Harbour for freeholds to Bellway leasehold houses, The Times reports

Seventy families in Ellesmere Port in Cheshire are locked in a battle to gain the freeholds to their Bellway homes that were sold off to William Waldorf Astor’s secretive Long Harbour fund, The Times reports today. Katie Kendrick, co-founder of the National Leasehold Campaign and LKP trustee, has organised her neighbours to demand the freeholds. […]

Cladding victims now being hit by insurance hikes, reports BBC R4 You and Yours

By Harry Scoffin The cladding crisis has rippled through the insurance market, with leasehold tenants in dangerous apartment buildings “being hammered” by “inflated bills”, BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme was told yesterday. Lessees of flats in Birmingham’s Islington Gates, a mixed-use development with 144 properties wrapped in Grenfell ACM (aluminium composite material), claim […]

Grenfell United link up with leaseholder groups to protest cladding crisis and warn next government of Grenfell 2

By Harry Scoffin Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire have this week joined forces with leaseholders stuck in privately-owned blocks clad with deadly combustibles, telling the major party leaders of their “deep and grave concern that a Grenfell-like fire is going to occur again”. In a letter sent on Tuesday to Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn […]

Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, challenges party leaders over leasehold scandal

By Harry Scoffin Consumer affairs champion Martin Lewis (above) has challenged the major party leaders to explain their policies on leasehold as part of an online election debate. Election 2019: The MSE Leaders’ Debate It’s the biggest consumer decision most will make in 2019. While it’s important to factor everything in, voting to choose who […]

Would you want your former Prudential pension invested in Tchenguiz ground rents by Rothesay Life? FT reports concerns

The Financial Times has reported concerns about pensions invested by Rothesay Life in the ground rent portfolio of Vincent Tchenguiz. Rothesay Life has loans of some £1.7bn to the Tchenguiz interests, which are secured against ground rents that are paid annually by residential leaseholders. UK regulator under fire over £12bn annuity deal The UK’s Prudential […]

Why AN14 is making your cladding flat impossible to sell

By Martin Boyd A growing number of leaseholders are discovering that selling their flat has become more difficult. Prospective buyers need to obtain a valuation for their lenders. Now, on thousands of homes, this may mean they need something called an ‘Advice Note 14’ (AN14) report and it many cases these reports do not exist! […]

Supreme Court blocks enfranchisement ploy that seems to be pure enrichment

The legal somersault that is lease enfranchisement – the right of a private individual compulsorily to acquire the property (the freehold) of someone else – has come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. Hautford Limited owned the lease of a six storey building, which could be either residential or commercial depending on the consent […]

‘You weren’t mis-sold your leasehold house and I am keeping my £45m bonus’, is the message of Persimmon CEO to Bluebell Meadow

Persimmon fatcat says he isn’t going to hand over freeholds at Bluebell Meadow … Even though taxpayers through Help To Buy subsidised these flawed purchases, which also helped make him a multimillionaire Persimmon CEO David Jenkinson, who received a controversial bonus of £45 million which saw his predecessor sacked, has said he will not be […]

Taxpayers funding two leasehold houses a day in 2019 through Help To Buy … despite government saying THREE times they should be banned

By Harry Scoffin Almost two years on from the announcement of a ban on the sale of new-build houses as leasehold tenancies, developers are continuing to cash in on the practice. According to government figures published yesterday, the first half of 2019 has seen Help To Buy equity loans taken out on 395 leasehold houses. […]

Retirement housebuilders will only reform when they are forced to do so, Lord Best tells property conference

By Harry Scoffin Influential crossbench peer Lord Richard Best told the Homes UK conference in London’s Excel centre yesterday that retirement housebuilders need to up their game following devastating reports last week in both The Times and The Guardian. Both newspapers drew on the work of LKP’s sister organisation www.BetterRetirementHousing.com to condemn dismal resale values […]

Developers can now seize FREEHOLD homes, reports BBC R4 MoneyBox in shocking expose of ‘fleecehold’

By Harry Scoffin Tens of thousands of consumer homeowners face having their freehold houses taken off them by developers if they “fall more than 40 days behind” on estate management payments, an investigation by BBC Radio 4’s MoneyBox has found. MoneyBox reported on Saturday that the number of houses subject to restrictive ‘rentcharges’ and estate […]

Only one Grenfell cladding site in line for taxpayer handout as December 31st deadline looms, reports BBC R4 You and Yours  

By Harry Scoffin Six months on from the government declaring that taxpayers would pay to save leaseholders from ruinous Grenfell ACM cladding bills, only 1 of the 86 sites has got to the first approval stage ahead of the December 31 deadline. Despite this dismal level of progress, a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local […]

The Liberals (no, not those ones) register ‘severe dissatisfaction’ with Tory record on leasehold

By Harry Scoffin The Liberals, once the Conservatives’ main rival in British politics and the party of government during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, have launched a blistering broadside at the Tories over leasehold inaction in its 2019 election offering. The minor party, which opposed the 1988 merger between the Liberals and the […]

‘Get leasehold done’? Boris Johnson’s Conservatives repeat 2017 pledges in manifesto

By Harry Scoffin The Conservative party will implement plans to ban the selling of houses as leasehold tenancies and slash new ground rents to zero, it was confirmed today. The policies feature in the 60-page manifesto entitled “Get Brexit Done, Unleash Britain’s Potential”, launched this afternoon in the marginal seat of Telford. On page 29 […]

More Posts from this Category

DIrection

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Find Everything

Essential reads …

  • Ground rent scandal
  • Parliament
  • MPs’ APPG on leasehold
  • Benjamin Mire
  • Moskovitz / Gurvits
  • Oakland Court
  • McCarthy and Stone
  • Persimmon
  • Recognised Tenants’ Association
  • Cladding crisis
  • Canary Riverside
  • John Christodoulou
  • Peverel
  • Peverel Cirrus story so far
  • Charter Quay
  • Forfeiture
  • Plantation Wharf
  • Law Commission
  • Plantation Wharf
  • West India Quay
  • LEASE: what’s the point?
  • Tchenguiz
  • Sean Powell
  • Press
  • Exit fees
  • William Waldorf Astor
  • Martin Paine
  • LKP anthem
  • LVT/Property Chamber Survival
  • Most damning LVT ruling ever made
  • Pensioners win £68,500
  • Park Homes
  • Redrow
  • Retirement

Copyright © 2019 Leasehold Knowledge Partnership