Freehold Management in Plymouth
Specialist Freehold Management for landlords and residents. Trust Plymouth Block Management for expert service, compliance & financial oversight.
As an award-winning, independent residential freehold management company, Plymouth Block Management provides specialist advice and both block and freehold management to both Resident Management Companies and private landlords, and extending to a range of residential property from listed buildings of four flats to considerably larger modern mixed use developments.
We strive to provide a professional and efficient service to suit the requirements and preferences of our clients, based on a personal approach, aimed at establishing good and effective relationships between agent, landlord and leaseholder.
What a Freeholder Is Responsible For
A freeholder's obligations are set by the leases they granted. Typically that means insuring the building, maintaining the structure, common parts and services, and collecting a service charge to fund it. Those duties do not lapse because a building is small or because the freeholder lives elsewhere.
The statutory obligations sit on top. Service charge demands must be accompanied by a summary of rights and obligations, money must be held on trust under section 42 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, and works above the section 20 thresholds require formal consultation before the cost can be recovered in full. Getting the consultation wrong is the single most common way a freeholder loses the right to recover the money they have already spent.
What We Take On
Freehold management is the day-to-day delivery of those obligations: budgets and service charge accounting prepared to the lease, statutory consultation run properly and on time, insurance placed and claims handled, compliance evidence kept current, and repairs specified, tendered and supervised.
The freeholder keeps ownership and the decisions that go with it. What changes is that the administration, the statutory deadlines and the contractor management stop being their problem, and the leaseholders get a named contact who is accountable for the building.
Where Freehold Management Differs from Block Management
The work overlaps, but the client is not the same and neither is the risk. In block management the client is usually a resident management company or an RTM company, and the directors are leaseholders themselves. In freehold management the client is the owner of the reversion, and the leaseholders are the people the obligations are owed to.
That changes the emphasis. A freeholder carries the liability if consultation is missed or insurance lapses, so the priority is evidence: demands served correctly, money held on trust and reconciled, statutory notices issued on time, and a record that stands up if a service charge is later challenged at the First-tier Tribunal.
Notices a Freeholder Cannot Skip
Every demand for rent or service charge must state the landlord's name and address under section 47 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, and leaseholders must have been given an address in England and Wales for serving notices under section 48. Until both are in place the amounts demanded are not treated as due.
Ground rent has its own rule. Under section 166 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 it is not payable unless the leaseholder has been sent a notice in the prescribed form between 30 and 60 days before the date it falls due. A freeholder who simply invoices, or relies on the leaseholders remembering, has no enforceable ground rent for that period.
Selling the Freehold
Leaseholders of flats usually have a right of first refusal when the freehold is sold. Part 1 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 requires the freeholder to offer the building to the qualifying leaseholders on the same terms before selling elsewhere, and failing to serve that offer notice without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence.
If a sale is being considered, the notices, the timetable and the response period need to be planned before the building is marketed, not after an offer has been accepted. We work with the freeholder's solicitor so the management records, accounts and compliance history are ready for the buyer's enquiries.
Insurance and What Leaseholders Can Ask For
Most leases make the freeholder responsible for insuring the building and recovering the premium through the service charge. Leaseholders have a statutory right to a written summary of the cover and to inspect the policy, and they can challenge a premium that has not been reasonably incurred.
We place cover through brokers, keep the schedule and the claims history on the building's record, and handle claims for the common parts. Insurance broking is an FCA-regulated activity that we are not authorised to advise on, which is why the broker, not us, advises on the policy itself.
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