Right To Manage

When you are the owner of a leasehold flat, legislation now allows you the right to manage your own building. This means that you can either take over the running yourself, or appoint a managing agent, accountable to you, to do it on your behalf. It is normally a good idea to employ professionals to do this for you, especially if your freeholder is hostile to the idea.

To win the Right to Manage, you don’t have to prove that your current landlord or management agent has done anything wrong, you just need to follow a very specific process to take over the running of the building.  This can be a minefield, but our team can help you navigate the process to a successful outcome, based on experience in other buildings.

You can considerably improve the way your building is run and even reduce costs .

talk to us for a free assessment

Right to manage criteria

In order to participate in this process you need to have at least half of the leaseholders in agreement and then the following criteria needs to be met :

  • At least two thirds of the flats must be owned by way of a lease with an original term of more than 21 years. The owner does not have to live there.
  • The building must be self-contained and so must the individual flats
  • The building must have at least two flats
  • If the building has any commercial element (e.g. shops on the ground floor), this must not be more than 25% of the total floor area
  • At least 50% of the leaseholders have to be in agreement with moving to Right to Manage
  • If the building is a converted property of four or fewer flats, neither the landlord or his/her family must occupy any of the flats as a principal residence
  • The local authority must not be the landlord of any leaseholder

This can be a lengthy process and if the correct procedures are not followed, your landlord may be able to block the process.  So talk to us now and we can help you decide whether this is right for you or not.