Category Archives: Leasehold and shared ownership

Being civil

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Morshead Mansions has been involved in a quite astonishing amount of litigation. Bailii throws up 13 hits (here), cases in the LVT, Lands Tribunal, High Court and Court of Appeal. It’s really must be the most awful burden on all those involved. And now, there is another case to add to the list, Di Marco v Morshead Mansions Ltd [2013] EWHC 1068 (Ch).

Morshead Mansions Ltd is a lessee-owned company. It holds the freehold of (appropriately enough) Morshead Mansions, a block of 104 or so flats. It has two different ways of raising money. The first (and most common) is via the service charge. It seems that, at … Read the full post

Yet another one…

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The Leasehold Reform Act 1967 gives qualifying long leaseholders of houses the right, inter alia, to acquire the freehold. The definition of “house” is quite technical, but, in essence, it turns on whether it could reasonably be called a house (even if it could reasonably be called something else). There is a quite eye-watering amount of law on this issue, most recently Day v Hosebay Ltd; Howard de Walden v Lexgorge [2012] UKSC 41 (our note here).

In general terms, many of these cases are worth quite a lot of money. Which means that they get appealed (and appealed, and appealed). In Henley and another v Cohen [2013] … Read the full post

To be incurred or not to be incurred?

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Those with good memories will remember that a year or so ago the Upper Tribunal gave judgment in a case called Om Property Management Ltd v Burr (our note here) in which the issue was at what point in time does a cost became incurred for the purposes of s.20B, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. It decided that costs became incurred on the presentation of an invoice or on payment.

Mr Burr appealed against that decision and the Court of Appeal recently gave its judgment on the subject (judgment here).

The facts, for those too lazy to click the link above, were that in November 2007, through … Read the full post

Back in time*

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I thought the landlord would lose Daejan v Benson, and, as you all know, the landlord won (see our note here). When NL flagged the next case up to me, I predicted the landlord would lose. And it won. Quite remarkably in my view, but, as is becoming clear, no-one should rely on my view. Least of all me.

In Brickfield Properties Ltd v Botten [2013] UKUT 133 (LC), the Upper Tribunal was grappling with whether or not a variation of a lease under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 could have retrospective effect. By way of introduction, as you know, the LVT has two primary powers to … Read the full post

Would you like ketchup with that hat?

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Ok. Confession time. For the last year or so, I have been confidently predicting (often vocally and to unsuspecting passers-by) that the landlord would lose its appeal in Daejan Properties Ltd v Benson [2013] UKSC 14. Well, the landlord won.* And so I have a veritable brimful** of hats to consume over the next few weeks.

The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 is the primary statute governing service charges and protections for leaseholders. Sections 20 and 20ZA deal with consultation before certain costs are recoverable. In outline, if a landlord wants to recover more than £250 per leaseholder in respect of works, he needs to consult them in the prescribed … Read the full post

Catching up with the LVT

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Sorry (both to readers* and the rest of the NL team) for the delay in getting these done. We’ve had a few Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) cases over the last few weeks and I’ve been rather less efficient than I had hoped. So, here goes.

LB Southwark v Bevan [2013] UKUT 114 (LC) is another one in the “err, what were you thinking?” model of LVT decisions. The case concerned service charges at a block of flats held by Southwark. One of the eight flats was let on long lease to the respondents. The other seven were all retained by Southwark. The lease provided that Southwark could adopt any … Read the full post

Same old, same old

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People who are both regular readers of this blog and interested in the LVT (admittedly a small number) will know that the UT(LC) has been doing the judicial equivalent of laying the smack down on the LVT for deciding cases on points that no-one raised and without telling the parties that this is what the LVT intends to do. See, for example, here and here.

In Sadd v Brown [2012] UKUT 438 (LC) we have “yet anther example of the LVT taking a point not sought to be pursued by the party in whose favour the decision was taken and without giving either party an opportunity to deal with … Read the full post