Well, no, because Richard provided a thoughtful response, and you didn’t. Not sure on your agenda, but you seem to be obsessed with belittling posts that you don’t agree with.
Thanks for your considered response, unlike users like Colin3 who have done nothing but provide unhelpful and unsavoury comments that are tantamount to poor online conduct - simply because he seems to be a Fidei Defensor for RTM.
I have actually received a followup FAQ from the group organising saying that the running costs won’t necessarily decrease. I have had a great relationship with Galliard for 7 years - and they’ve always solved any problems Ive had with no fuss and remedied any issues promptly. I know have to build that relationship up again with a management company I didn’t have any involvement in selecting.
“I’m sure they care about the building more than Galliard Homes” is a bit of an assumption. You may well be right, but caring about a building is very subjective - what they may care about may well not be consistent with how others seek to derive value for money.
And indeed you are right - the people involved have been at pains to make clear how much work they’ve put in, and seek an immense amount of gratitude in return. My response to them is simply that I didn’t bring that work onto them - they did themselves. It doesn’t really follow logically that someone who didn’t agree to RTM would be grateful for the work others put into something they didn’t vote for. If they’d not initiated it in the first place, they wouldn’t have had to undertake the work. So it seems a bit rich for them to demand gratitude for work they are not even doing on my behalf - since i never voted for RTM.
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I find it Sad that this forum is at times getting so Toxic. It’s getting as bad as Social media.
If you can be anything today. Please Be Nice.
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Hi Kel
I bought my flat after it was already under the rtm provision and the nine flats decided to do this in order to have more control in their service charges.
I had to learn very quickly the pros and cons of this set up and ultimately learned that every penny of the service charge goes back into maintaining the building. It’s our investment. The residents decided against using a management company and decided to it themselves and on the whole it works very well. It is our property management company we all have an equal share in the company and the freehold and it’s a not for profit organisation so no one can take liberties. By being part of the group you will be able to scrutinise the finances, be a decision making voter and be able to have your say.
Our service charge remains one of the lowest in North wales but at no detriment to the care repair and maintenance of our building. Don’t get me wrong we have disputes but equally we have healthy challenges and sounds like you would be an asset to that scrutiny and accountability.
Of our 9 members only 3 are consistently active and present, 2 are completely disengaged and the others drop in as and when they feel there is work to be done. Do I care ? Not really because if people abstain from voting then they are not really using their opportunity to have a say.
I agree the leasehold advisory service are pretty useless. More than happy to talk you through some things off the forum if that’s more helpful. Not sure if this does private chat
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Thanks Ru11 for your helpful post - and thank you for not being patronising and demeaning like other posters - this is the type of response I was hoping to learn from.
There are some differences between your situation and mine I think - mine is among a block of 50+ properties, and the RTM in total covers over 250. And of course many of the leaseholders are mixed - some foreign investors who are often AWOL, some owner occupiers, some BTL landlords. Im not sure how old your block is, but mine is relatively new - the flats were completed in 2015 and Ive had no problems raised by any of my tenants in the years since.
And mine is in London - and unfortunately we don’t have quite the same demographic as many other parts of the country (e.g. like North Wales), where, in my experience, people tend to be much nicer, understanding and fair. In London, we have a lot of entitlement and thus disagreement is very common - it’s fashionable here to be different, and people tend to have it in for large companies full stop. Having worked for a few big companies myself, it’s the main brand challenge we have faced - customers just not really trusting us, and seeing big multinationals as just bad business actors full stop. That seems to permeate through to issues like this in the psyche of leaseholders - hence my reference to a “crusader” mentality. It might seem a bit of a false correlation I am making here - but having spoken to our RTM committee, they just don’t give any room for feedback to convince me otherwise:
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They sprung this out of the blue - and thus it gives the appearance of a clandestine operation that has been working away on a project without community involvement - then presenting it as a fait accompli.
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I asked them to give me some information about each of their backgrounds (e.g. some bios and the responsibility areas they have) so I could direct questions appropriately - they didn’t do so and felt offended that I indirectly questioned their capability as a result.
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I asked what would be the commonly agreed assessment criteria for any management company to be evaluated and who would set this >>> they just picked a management company themselves (Prime) without a tendering process and without consultation. This was apparently because a nearby block uses them. They also said in some FAQs that this company had been helping them throughout the whole RTM process - indeed confirming that the choice of a management company had been already decided from Day 0. At the very worst, that opens your mind as to the reasons why you might choose a certain company from the outset, and not open up a fair tender.
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I asked many times for a timeline or project plan >>> they just pointed me to emails they sent once every 3 months.
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I asked them whether they were using RTM as a threat to negotiate with the existing management company run by Galliard >>> they said there was no need to even negotiate fresh terms and went nuclear to RTM by default.
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I asked them for some simple benchmarking analysis on comparable blocks nearby to get an idea of what potential savings could be. Maybe Im being demanding, but this seems like a basic bit of research you would do as a CBA for any project. At least knowing a potential saving using RTM, and shaving off insurance costs here and there for example would save on avg. 10% year on year for 3 years would be helpful ammunition to convince someone that RTM is the right approach.
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I asked them if there were serious issues that the rest of the community think are significant enough to pursue RTM, how come I haven’t seen or heard of them? And if I am ignorant to them (very plausible as I don’t live on site), then how come my tenants haven’t raised them in 7 years? If there was a breach of contract by Galliard, how come I didn’t know of it? I asked them for concrete examples and they have nothing.
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A moot point, but they sent me a DocuSign 49 times after I had already told them I wasn’t going to agree.
I have also experienced issues in a block of only 5 flats, where we owned the freehold, but still couldn’t agree to much between each other, and with the management company. So in short, it’s tough to bring people together with very different perspectives, even in small groups.
As Ive mentioned, Im not against RTM - who doesn’t want to pay lower service charges for the same set of outcomes? The point Im making is that in formulating the decision to undertake RTM, it seems remiss to not do even the most basic analysis and present that to leaseholders as the basis upon which to make an informed decision.
I hope that helps provide context as to why I think how I think. Please feel free to tell me if this is stupid and uneducated analysis.
Ru11 do you remember how nuch a management company was going to charge to administer the maintaining of the flats ?. I presume the residents do not charge . I bought a flat for my daughter several years ago and their charge was 15% on top of the work bills, I also went to the annual meeting with the Managing company ( they built the 3 blocks of flats) .Out of the 10 residents ,only 3 of us showed up The rest were happy to leave the voting to us… So we voted for a small increase in the service charge to go into the sinking fund , It also helped that I knew all the people in the management company and trusted them
Hi Kell
Yes I am in a totally different boat to you in that our building we only have 9 flats and 9 shareholders and as such we can easily manage the properties between us. As for geographical location, I think it’s fair to say that the phrase " nowt so queer as folk" apply everywhere 
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So all I can say is that on the surface the old property management company may have been adequate for the tenants but often it’s the issues that the tenants don’t see that can may be where the difficulties arise. And it may also be the future direction of the property management company that may be leaving some nervousness or even the freeholders who may refuse to negotiate some sensible changes to the lease.
The RTM legislation came about to give leaseholders some much needed power and leverage for ensuring that the freeholders and their property mangement companies did not continue to abuse their position.
Personally, I think if you do have the opportunity to join the RTM then you may want to consider it. In the future you may change your mind and your request could be refused or high cost to you.
In the meanwhile, the RTM company have to, comply with a Government-approved code of management practice; one produced by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and one by the Association of Retirement Housing Managers (ARHM) While compliance with the codes is not mandatory, failure to do so is one of the grounds for an application to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) to appoint a new manager or to end the right to manage. Perhaps playing the long game- biding your time, seeking some covert support by other leaseholders and then use the tribunal at the relevant time when the management company have clearly failed in their duties could be the way forward.
Hi Colin. Between the flats first going on sale in 2007 and 2022 the service charge has remained the same. Partly because it was in 2014 that the rtm company came in and the owners managed the property themselves. I came in as one of the directors and scrutinised the options. The best deal we had from a property management company would have put our service charge up from £300 to £800 per year but even then it felt as though the company were not able to honour supporting the local businesses in trade.
15% sounds very reasonable.
Myself and the other director ensure all bill payments, searching of best rates, using local trade people where we can and recently commissioned the services of a legal team to pay the non payment of service charges.
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that is very good you must be pleased with that… using locals who get to know the property is a good idea.
Definitely, and the other thing is we won’t automatically do things cheaply because the whole building is ultimately our future and our investment so it means that we ensure things are done right for all owners.
Don’t get me wrong, if we found a good management company that ticked all the right boxes, I would be glad to hand it over but for the time being we have the motivation and energy to keep it moving forward and hopefully at the satisfaction of the other owners
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Thanks Ru11,
I take and acknowledge your points. I can understand the difference between what tenants see and what they don’t - but I do visit the premises fairly often, and have liaised with the old management very well over the last 7 years. Plus, it’s a relatively new block, from reputable enough developers (Galliard) that the very people who bought those properties now want to change through RTM. A 7 year swing with little to no decline seems radical to me, but maybe this is common.
I can add some specific detail as to why one of the committee wanted to pursue RTM (this is what they told me):
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They mentioned they paid out of pocket to fix a balcony door (a manufacturing fault), when all I did was contact the management company, who got someone to fix it for me free of charge, as it was their responsibility to fix it.
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They also paid out of pocket to change the lock of an internal door (their tenant got locked inside her own room so, emergency locksmith and change of lock). As this is part of their own flat and not the communal area (and not a manufacturer fault), it’s their (the landlord’s) job to fix it. So to blame that on the management company seems totally uncorrelated to me.
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Throughout that time, their property was managed by Life Residential, who they think work on behalf of Galliard. I look after mine myself and fix any issues myself and with my trade contacts. The failure of an agency that you chose to engage with isn’t the fault of the management company, however much you try to make out they work in sync.
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They are again at pains to mention the time and effort they put in as if I need to bend over backwards to thank them for activities that I didn’t initiate for them - and the constant gaslighting is rather unusual if you seek to build and establish good relations with other leaseholders.
So these to me do not seem valid reasons as to why the management company is failing, when a bit of common sense and proactivity, and lack of tenant error would have eradicated all of these issues.
Furthermore, they didn’t engage me in further comms and cut me off, just because I asked them some tough questions. Let me ask you - are these the type of people you would want making decisions on your behalf when the slightest bit of challenge results in cutting people off and gaslighting?
RTM seems a very liberally driven policy to engage with the new meta of activism amongst leaseholders to fight the big bad corporates. And the way my situation has evolved is testament to this - a bunch of entitled and embattled liberals that don’t accept or acknowledge any challenge to their groupthink, despite being the same kinds of people who espouse values of diversity, inclusivity and fairness.
It seems that your RTM team have not put anything to a vote. That’s a bit odd.
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A RTM cannot be formed without a majority vote. If an individual chooses not to vote or engage ,then the majority will carry on without him or her,
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