Leaseholders inform BBC of battle with main freeholder Assethold | EUROtoday

Homeowners have instructed the BBC how they’ve been left hundreds of kilos a yr worse off due to expenses imposed by an organization that owns a whole lot of freeholds throughout England and Wales.

A BBC News investigation has discovered that leaseholders have needed to pay a whole lot of kilos for companies similar to key-cutting and the cleansing of doormats and council bins.

We have examined about 140 court docket tribunals regarding the corporate, Assethold, and found that judges have assessed it to have overcharged owners by a mixed sum of practically £1.2m.

Leaseholders have spoken to the BBC concerning the influence on their psychological well being of the sharp rise in charges they’ve confronted and of their battle to carry the freeholder to account.

On Thursday, forward of the publication of this investigation, the federal government introduced the leasehold system in England and Wales can be overhauled by the top of the present Parliament.

In the spring I acquired an e-mail from Sue Robertson, following an investigation I carried out into the overcharging of leaseholders. The e-mail was amongst about 200 I used to be despatched by owners who instructed me they had been having points with their service expenses.

Sue described how hovering expenses and authorized threats had been affecting her funds and well being. I replied and some days later heard from her neighbour, who instructed me Sue was in hospital having tried to take her personal life. After she had recovered, I went to fulfill her.

At Sue’s one-bedroom ground-floor flat in Worthing, West Sussex, she defined to me that it had as soon as been her “sanctuary” however was now inflicting her extreme nervousness.

In 2019, she was paying about £750 a yr in service expenses. Sue thought the payment was about proper for her flat, which is certainly one of two in a small transformed home and has little shared house to take care of.

But that yr, the freehold to her property was offered at public sale to a north London agency referred to as Assethold. She says its sister firm, Eagerstates, took over the administration, after which her service cost greater than doubled. By 2023, her invoice was £3,198 – a rise of 320% in 4 years.

“I dread the post,” she instructed me.

“Every time we get a new bill, it’s got something different on it. I think they’re just charging us money for nothing.”

There are nearly five million leasehold properties in England – homes where residents pay ground rent on top of their mortgage.

New laws are going through Parliament to force building owners to make the bills they charge more transparent, although campaigners who say the system is being abused don’t believe the legislation goes far enough.

According to the Land Registry, Assethold owns the freehold to almost 400 sites in England and Wales, on properties ranging from small converted houses to large flat blocks.

More than 10 people have spoken to me about consistent overcharging by Assethold and Eagerstates.

They all allege that Assethold, owned by Joseph Gurvits, repeatedly overcharged leaseholders for shoddy or non-existent work commissioned by the managing agent, Eagerstates, which is also owned by Mr Gurvits and run by his son, Ronni.

Through analysis of about 140 official court documents from the past five years, the BBC has discovered that Assethold, through Eagerstates, has overcharged leaseholders by at least £1,173,000. Despite this, and multiple complaints to the authorities, the leaseholders we’ve spoken to say nobody is listening.

Sue’s neighbour, James, 31, who lives in the flat upstairs, is also struggling to pay the service charge. When he saw an increased bill, he says he flew into “absolute panic – my heart was racing and I just didn’t know what to do. I thought: ‘We can’t live here any more.’”

Assethold stated: “We are deeply concerned to hear that residents have reported emotional and financial stress due to these matters.”

Sue and James argue their payments are “massively” inflated and comprise oddities similar to a cost of £719 to get a key minimize, in addition to an annual payment of £500 to scrub a 140x125cm (55x49in) doormat space and £300 to scrub council wheelie bins – each of which Sue and James say have by no means been completed.

James says the scenario has change into “unbearably stressful” for him and his associate. He says he’s working further hours and has needed to borrow £30,000 to pay the elevated expenses and to rent solicitors.

Assethold stated: “The increase in service charges over the past three years reflects essential infrastructure upgrades and inflationary pressures in the property sector.”

One of the one methods leaseholders can problem service expenses is by going to a first-tier tribunal, a kind of civil court docket.

It is a tribunal’s function to find out whether or not service expenses are “reasonable and payable”, and to not rule on whether or not there was any wrongdoing. But by inspecting a whole lot of pages of proof, now we have discovered a number of judges’ feedback that point out a sample of dangerous apply regarding Assethold.

At the decrease finish of the size, one decide agreed that “£135 to change two light bulbs was excessive”. At the other end, we have found that tribunals have awarded sums of up to £100,000 back to leaseholders for “unreasonable” service charges.

One tribunal heard how homeowners had been unable to sell their flats and had been “significantly affected (financially and psychologically)”. In this case, about £38,000 of the mixed service cost was deemed to be unreasonable.

Assethold was described in court as a “multimillion-pound freehold company” that had “simply refused to co-operate” with the process, behaviour that was referenced in many of the documents we examined from about 140 court tribunals.

Sebastian O’Kelly, director of registered charity and campaign group Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, says his organisation receives a “disproportionate” number of complaints about Eagerstates.

“Something is badly wrong with the way it manages its portfolio of properties. We are inundated with complaints about Eagerstates.”

In one case typical of those the BBC investigated, a judge called the firm’s tactics “malicious”, referred to “aggressive letters” it had sent and repeatedly commented on the company’s poor management.

Assethold said it was “actively reviewing findings from previous tribunal choices” and had implemented changes where necessary.

“Across varied properties now we have at all times tried to make sure worth for cash throughout repairs in addition to guaranteeing a excessive stage of service. Costs are repeatedly benchmarked and reviewed in step with different contractors.”

Jane Steel, who bought a one-bedroom flat in Milton Keynes as an investment for her family, is another leaseholder who has told the BBC of her dissatisfaction with Eagerstates.

The combined service charge for the 80-flat block was £60,000 when she and her partner bought the property in 2016. Three years later, it was £250,000.

Jane, who has an accountancy background, spent weeks going through invoices and says she came across numerous questionable charges, including more than £38,000 to repair lifts that were only a year old. She says the block’s leaseholders were also overcharged more than £60,000 in electricity costs.

Assethold said this was “merely incorrect”, adding that it had credited £20,000 to leaseholders and that future accounts “might be lowered accordingly”. It said an independent surveyor “discovered that the raise was nicely maintained and was displaying age in keeping with the set up made”.

Jane has also complained of many other charges she says are inflated, such as one for £2,640 to put fire safety signs on 25 doors.

Jane says the contractor, Superior Facilities Maintenance {SFM), has billed tens of thousands of pounds for poor-quality work at the building and Eagerstates pays up “no questions requested”.

Assethold stated: “Any works carried out can be backed up with pictures and an bill. We do examine the properties repeatedly and do communicate to the contractor if any complaints are raised concerning the works.”

The BBC has seen dozens of invoices for work by SFM on other buildings, including Sue’s and James’s.

Last summer they received a bill for £4,500 from the company, via Eagerstates, for repairs to lead work on the roof. “They [the contractors] came for a short amount of time – I don’t know what they did up there – then they charged us all that money for it,” James says.

Sue and James have shown me an invoice from SFM that shows they were charged for scaffolding, when they say only a ladder was used to access the roof.

We tried to contact Superior Facilities Maintenance but the phone number listed online didn’t connect and its website was defunct.

Leaseholders have shown the BBC invoices that were issued by SFM through Eagerstates. The cost of the work detailed in them amounted to £98,000 since 2022.

We have discovered that SFM hasn’t submitted accounts to Companies House, which is a criminal offence. According to Companies House, it has been sent six letters about this.

By delving into the various tribunal documents, we have found other complaints about Eagerstates’ use of SFM.

In a recent case, a judge accepted there had been “a lack of transparency” when SFM was employed to do roof repairs and stated there have been “significant concerns about the quality of the works”. In this case, the decide disallowed virtually all of the £21,000 charged by SFM.

Assethold stated: “That is simply not the case and defamatory by the judge; there was clear transparency and copious correspondence between ourselves and the leaseholders about the contractor.”

SFM has not responded to the BBC’s requests for remark.

While a tribunal doesn’t have powers make judgments on potential criminality or different doable wrongdoing, one decide stated they had been “not satisfied” that an bill offered by SFM, for £1,750, was “bona fide”.

Assethold stated: “That is simply not the case and defamatory by the judge; there was clear transparency and the invoice is bona fide. How a judge can say that with no evidence is absurd and we are considering making a complaint about the judge and these comments as there must be evidence to say this.”

That bill was certainly one of a number of questioned by Raymond Shaw.

He is a leaseholder at a block owned by Assethold in Stratford, east London. He has 20 years’ expertise working as a legal lawyer, specialising in fraud. Raymond says the best way the corporate operates makes him “raise an eyebrow”.

In 2018, the service charge was a little over £900 a year. The latest annual bill was for more than £6,000 – a 560% rise.

Assethold disputes the sums provided by Raymond, however he says he and his wife spent “weeks and months” poring over their payments and looking out into the businesses Eagerstates works with. They say a number of are new and others shut after a brief interval.

They believe there are links between some of them, including family connections to the cleaning firm used at his flat block.

Assethold said: “This is just not so; all contractors are bona fide and unbiased.”

Raymond says the block of 11 flats was charged £10,000 for cleaning last year but the service is “atrocious” and, despite the high cost, the building is filthy and bins aren’t collected, causing a problem with rats and a terrible smell.

Assethold said: “Rubbish piles up on account of varied brief lets and abuse by the residents which implies waste is consistently dumped within the property.”

At a tribunal last year, Raymond and some of his neighbours were awarded back almost £60,000 because of overcharging that took place over a three-year period.

Assethold said “This included largely estimated expenses, and now we have refunded any monies to the leaseholders.”

The advice given to leaseholders who dispute their service charge is to pay up and take the matter up later, or they could face losing their property in a process known as forfeiture – a measure described as “draconian” by Sebastian O’Keefe from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Sue withheld some of her payment in protest over her charges and was threatened with a possession order by Eagerstates, meaning that if she didn’t pay in full, it would start forfeiture proceedings to claim the entire value of her property.

Sue says: “I couldn’t believe that. This is my flat, this is my home. How can they take that away from me? I’ve bought it, it’s mine.

“I still can’t cope with it. I get really upset about it.”

Ji Hoon Yoon, an Assethold leaseholder who gained his authorized dispute with the agency, is certainly one of many individuals who’ve instructed me of points with the tribunal system. “There’s nothing within the judicial system to link up all of these cases, even if they’ve done this time and time again,” he says.

He has arrange an organization to assist leaseholders making an attempt to problem expenses.

The skilled physique for managing brokers, the Property Institute, is asking for constructing managers to be regulated – one thing that hasn’t been included in new legal guidelines the federal government is bringing in which can be geared toward strengthening leaseholders’ powers.

Jane is taking authorized motion in a bid to win the correct to handle her constructing as a result of, because it stands, she says her flat is unsellable.

“There’s a whole mixture of emotions, really, from anger to disappointment to just unfairness, that the laws aren’t there to help,” she says.

Sue and James have efficiently utilized to purchase the freehold on their constructing, a Victorian conversion consisting of two flats. I used to be in Worthing County Court final month after they found that Assethold hadn’t registered the property to the Land Registry and so was not the authorized proprietor of the freehold.

Granting the pair permission to purchase the freehold, the decide stated the case was “extraordinary”, including that Assethold “haven’t even bothered to turn up” to present its model of occasions.

Sue, who describes Assethold as “a big black cloud over my head”, is trying ahead to having management of her house, and funds, as soon as once more.

For different leaseholders, the battle goes on.

Additional reporting by Victoria Archer