Arborbridge wrote:I doubt if researching would have been easy, nor much of a defence against what happened later.
You're quite right. Developers are some of the most unscrupulous, devious, outright liars I've ever come across - and I worked for a firm in my distant youth whose main clients were property developers, including some national names, so I've seen it at first hand.
This is why they do their best to get buyers of their houses to use the solicitors `recommended' by the developers. They have effectively bribed the solicitors with the promise of a stream of tame clients provided they don't ask any awkward questions, and concentrate on getting the clients to sign the contracts ASAP.
It's an utterly disgraceful practice, and the solicitors who accept the bribes are just as corrupt as the developers. The Law Society and the SRA should be punishing solicitors who take the 30 pieces of silver, but it's conveniently ignored, probably because they're too busy sending us 34 page questionnaires on whether we're meeting diversity and inclusion targets.
In cases like this the developers deliberately underestimate the charges that will be payable, knowing that because they are only estimates there's no comeback when they turn out to be two or three times larger.
These communal areas cause massive problems, often because nobody - including the developer - really wants them or cares about them, so the management schemes gradually fade away.
I have a client at present who owns a property on this type of development, and had agreed a sale. There was a manco set up to maintain the `communal area' that's nothing more than a grassy knoll - useful for shooting presidents, but not much else.
For some reason the grass has always been mown by the local council, so there was no need to spend any money on it. Each house owner was supposed to be a director of the manco, but as the manco had no real function various houses were sold without anyone bothering to observe this, and after the last director disappeared the manco was struck off the register for failing to file accounts.
Unfortunately, there's a restriction registered at the Land Registry that says:
No disposition of the registered estate ... is to be registered without a certificate signed on behalf of [the manco] ... that the provisions of paragraph 13.6 of the Transfer dated 2 September 2005 ... has been complied with.What this means is that no buyer of the property can register their title, as they need a certificate from a manco that doesn't exist. Consequently, as things stand the property is unsaleable and unmortgageable.
She has applied to the Land Registry to cancel the restriction, on the basis that it no longer serves any useful purpose, but they've refused. So she's now faced with having to incur substantial legal costs not only to restore the company to the register but to try and get it into operating condition. Needless to say, her fellow residents, who aren't selling, have no interest in co-operating as it means spending money. It's a nightmare for her.
Anyone buying property, whether leasehold or freehold, that has ongoing charges attached to it needs to be really careful about what they're letting themselves in for. On some developments these arrangements do work OK, but the potential for disaster is uncomfortably high.