Leasehold Life is pleased to welcome James Butler, Director of Landmark Leasehold Advisory Services Ltd, a small company based in St Albans providing an analytical and litigative service to leaseholders in England and Wales.

James is a 29 year old ex soldier who's temporary work experience and a family introduction led him to embark on a career in property,  becoming a surveyor in the summer of 2003. He initially worked for a number of managing agents and freeholders on the client side, providing property management, asset/portfolio managing and the forward planning of some very large commercial and residential portfolios. In 2008 he set up a consultancy service providing these and other services to the property sector directly by contract. It was whilst working with some of the larger landlords and developers during his career that he became aware of the extent of the problems faced by residential leaseholders:

“I recall from very early on the distain with which commercial leaseholders were treated and my alarm at how this level of non service was further personified when one considered the residential leaseholder. I can safely say that the leaseholder is still seen by most in the property sector as a cash cow, to be exploited and leveraged as far as possible to increase profit margins. Indeed the simple practice of upward only rent reviews and the glut of vacant high street and B1 office properties is but one demonstration of the effect that this often greedy sector can have upon itself.”

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Leasehold Life is pleased to welcome guest contributor David Hewett, outgoing Chief Executive of ARMA, the trade association for leasehold managing agents. Although the Government currently has  no intention of licencing this sector, I asked Mr Hewitt for his thoughts as to how ARMA might be affected should they have a change of mind. Here is his reply.

"However the regulatory regime was set up its role would have been to assess all those entities that manage leasehold property or handle service charge funds as to their fitness to do so.  The regime would have monitored performance, overseen complaints and would have had various sanctions including the ultimate sanction of banning organisations/individuals from the leasehold sector.  It is worth noting that it was mooted that the regime would cover not just managing agents but investor freeholders, RMCs and RTMcos that were self-managing. And it should be noted there were no plans for the regime to provide technical advice, support and training for those so regulated."

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