Enfranchise Me - Thursday

‘Fancy a valuation later?’ Asks assistant manager T as I return to the office. I’m immediately on my guard. T wouldn’t give away an easy instruction on a new property, so I’m sensing a curve ball. I sometimes wonder if pooling commission in the office is the best method. It’s less divisive and means fewer bust-ups over who won the business/sold the home, but it can benefit the lazy ones.

‘Where is it?’ I ask. T looks more sheepish than a Welsh shearer and negotiator S just looks down at her keyboard - which must be difficult with those huge breasts.

‘It’s somewhere naff, isn’t it?’ I say tersely.

‘Not exactly.’ Counters T unconvincingly.

‘Cough.’ I instruct. T tells me and I groan inwardly.

Now, you’d think any new home to sell on your books would be welcome and in general that’s true. You can’t sell it if you haven’t got it and a shortage of units to sell is the perpetual problem for most agents - until the market really turns. But T has just named a crumbling block of flats, with a short lease and a notoriously difficult absentee freeholder. Leasehold is a secondary form of tenure endured primarily by Londoners and flat owners. Only they don’t own their flats, they lease them for 99 years or more and in theory have to give them back at the end of the term.

‘You know they’ve got short leases don’t you?’ I tell, rather than ask, T.

‘Yeh, but they can use the legislation to extend.’ Counters T.

He’s right. Leasehold Reform laws offer a route for lessees to compel freeholders to extend their lease, or sell the freehold to a collective of residents, but it’s arcane, complicated and expensive. Particularly with a reluctant landlord intent on milking the building for all the income he can extract.

‘Isn’t that the block where there’s a huge hole in the sinking fund?’ Asks S. She’s right, the maintenance has been neglected and rumour has it a new flat roof is required at a six figure sum. A sum to be divided between the luckless owners.

‘And you won’t get a mortgage any more if there’s less that fifty years to run on the lease.’ Adds financial services man M, as he waddles towards the kitchen. ‘Cash buyers only.’ He adds, as I hear the kettle being filled with just enough water for one.

‘Is it even worth having on our register?’ Asks S after some protracted discussion on the inequities of leasehold and the number of rogue freeholders we’ve dealt with over the years.The shitesters who have separate building companies under a hidden ownership, that always get the overinflated maintenance work needed on the building. Not to mention the slyly written leases that have inflation-busting rises in ground rent designed to milk lessees until they are dry. And it’s usually the elderly.

‘We’re hoping to move into one of those nice new retirement flats.’ Says the ancient husband as I sit in the run-down block, later. Endearingly the old couple are holding hands and looking at me earnestly, as they perch on the saggy sofa.

Out of the frying pan into the fire, I think glumly. Assuming anyone will buy there cobwebby home, they’ll sell low and buy high at an overpriced retirement block and the extortionate maintenance charges will still be with them. I’m getting a stair lift and staying put, when my time comes.

‘I don’t understand.’ Says the wife, eyes rheumy and watering, after I’ve explained how lenders won’t advance funds until the lease on their flat is extended, or the freehold owned by the residents.

Neither do I grandma.

‘But we can’t afford to pay him any more.’ Says the husband angrily. ‘There’s already a huge bill coming for the communal boiler.’

Shit, I didn’t know that. I only just stop myself from looking at my watch - a cardinal sin. And I assume the impoverished pair don’t even know about the roof replacement.

They’ll be staying - until the undertaker comes.

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Happy Valley Court - Wednesday

Back at another sheltered retirement home development, with that growing sense of foreboding I’ve been getting ever since I valued my first one, about twenty-five years ago. In those days the minimum entry age of fifty-five seemed an age away, and about right for giving up on life and playing Whist in the communal lounge until the undertaker came. Now I’m not so sure…..

‘You can’t park there.’ Croaks an elderly woman, sitting astride one of those bulky motorised wheelchair-come-quad bike things that force you off the pavement and clip your ankles in supermarkets. I swear most occupants aren’t disabled, just too fat and lazy to walk.

‘I’m visiting number forty-two.’ I tell the nosey crone, who in fairness looks wrinkled and wobbly enough to justify her Blue Badge, allowing parking outside my office where I’m not permitted to stop.

The hag’s eyes twinkle. ‘Marjorie’s flat?’ She enquires with a gummy smile. I consult my clipboard and confirm the identity of the elderly owner, who is now in her third month blocking a hospital bed. I’m meeting the son in five minutes, so I need to shake off this old woman with all day to spare.

‘I knew she wouldn’t be back.’ Says the old girl with an unsettling chuckle, before engaging some sort of drive mechanism and whining across the car park towards an open ground floor flat door. 

I want to shout after the gloating woman, and tell her re-sales are really tricky on low-level units, but in truth it will be her beneficiaries who’ll have that problem.

‘Come on up, I’m on the fourth floor.’ Says a male voice, after I’ve buzzed the communal entrance doorbell. The door clicks and I grab it before the cut-off locks again. I’ve spent too many awkward minutes trying to re-establish contact with a hard-of-hearing occupant upstairs, when I’ve not tugged the door in time.

‘You here on business?’ Demand a disembodied voice, as I enter the gloomy foyer and get the first whiff of stewed cabbage that invariably inhabits the halls of these blocks. I see the house manager is in her little cubbyhole-come-office. There was a time when these places all had a live on-site warden to help the residents and to justify the sky-high management charges. Then the bean-counters took over.

I show the sour-faced woman my card and she begrudgingly nods acceptance, before adding curtly. ‘Don’t give them a stupid price. I know what you lot are like.’

I offer my well-practiced false smile and push the lift button. Nearly five minutes later the doors wheeze open. More bean-counter cost saving, I think, as I notice the cheap lift manufacturers logo and begin to wish I’d taken the stairs.

New build has often fetched a premium, but the prices elderly folk pay for these shrunken square footage flats has always disturbed me. During my first property crash I used to sell the second-hand, slightly soiled units, for about half what the parents had paid for them less than eighteen months before they went to the nursing home. Most of the blocks used to be called Something Court. Totally caught would have been more appropriate.

‘That you on the mantlepiece?’ I ask the late-middle aged son of Marjorie, as we try not to step on each others toes in the cramped flat. As usual, the furniture is way to big and dark for the living room/kitchen.

The man looks at the collection of faded photographs on the mock fireplace, wobbly-balanced above an electric fire. 

‘Yes.’ He answers with a self-conscious grin.

‘Mid-seventies?’ I enquire, looking at the shot of him with wrinkle-free skin and a disastrous mullet hair cut, but thinking about a suitable price for his mother’s flat.

‘Afraid so.’ He answers with a sheepish grin and a sweep across his bald pate, where time and genetics have robbed him of his locks.

‘Do you know how much Mum paid for the flat?’ I ask gingerly. Sometimes they say, sometimes they don’t. Then I hit him with the price.

Fortunately, he couldn’t tear his hair out. 

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