The first comment was in response to the story: End to doubling ground rent terms for thousands of leaseholders
Arron said: “This scandal was possible because developers are still coercing buyers into using in-house brokers and solicitors. These should be independent parties looking out for the buyer instead of their income generator.
“The government needs to ban developers from selling or recommending any services to buyers; alas there will be backhand deals if there is a grey area.”
Arron added: “The same should apply to estate agents as I still get cases where buyers are told their offer will not be put forward if they do not use in-house services.
“Buyers cannot be assured of independence nor confidentiality, so the only safe option is to ban referrals.”
Landlords are victims of cladding scandal too
The second comment was in response to last week’s Star Letter article, where a reader suggested buy-to-let landlords should be prepared to pay cladding costs as part of their property investment risk: BTL landlords should pay cladding costs – Star Letter 11/03/2022
Kerry Pace said: “I am a buy-to-let landlord by accident rather than design. My first buy-to-let – a very modest 450 square foot one bedroom flat in Croydon was my residential property – bought before my marriage. There were penalties attached to the mortgage so I kept the flat. I wasn’t even on the mortgage of my first marital home.
“Our cladding affected flat was bought – same size as the first buy-to-let – five years ago for our own use, not as a buy-to-let initially. We tried to sell because it wasn’t suitable for us. We found we could not due to cladding. In the meanwhile we had found a more suitable property which will be our ‘forever home’ when we return full-time to London.
“We would have sold the cladding affected flat but we can’t. We would have sold the only buy-to-let we had until this issue started, but now we can’t because we had to raise the mortgage to enable us to buy the new flat. This means we now have a massive capital gains bill we cannot afford right now.”
She added: “Even with cladding ‘sorted’ we won’t make a penny on the sale of the flat as it’s actually dropped in value since the purchase and I suspect it will be tainted by all of this.
“How can it be OK to provide help to leaseholders with no regard to status and yet discriminate against landlords with leaseholds on 11-18m flats? This is just unfair. It is clear it is unfair to discriminate victims and treat people differently.”
Kerry also responded to the article: Reimburse leaseholders for cladding costs and include portfolio landlords in exemptions, MPs say
She said: “Landlords are taxpayers too and are not to blame for this. You cannot discriminate in this way. Nobody expects to make a profit on sale of any asset, but nobody should be expected to find potentially massive sums to fix something that isn’t their fault.”
