Leaseholders

Tenants pay a weekly rent and some of this rent goes towards us providing a repairs and maintenance service. Leaseholders do not pay rent, and as owner occupiers, are not contributing towards a repairs and maintenance service with us. The Lease will state ours, and Leaseholders responsibilities, for repairs and maintenance. Any repairs we carry out will usually be to communal areas and are paid for through the service charge. Leaseholders are therefore able to arrange their own repairs and maintenance for their own apartment or bungalow where they have the maintenance responsibility. Leaseholders may wish to request a quotation from us to complete the repair on their behalf. We will invoice for any completed repairs or improvements.

If you would like LACE to quote you for a repair, please use our report a repair section of the website.

Your Lease agreement

We have a number of different leases in operation, so it is very important that you check the terms of your actual lease. Generally, a Leaseholder is responsible for:

Paying their service charge. The service charge pays for things like maintaining door-entry systems, cleaning shared areas and the upkeep of communal gardens. There are a number of ways to pay the service charge. Our preferred payment method is by Direct Debit, monthly in advance.
Carrying out any repairs their home needs.
Obtaining permission in writing from us first if they want to make improvements to their home.
Having their gas boiler or other gas appliances serviced regularly to make sure they are working safely and efficiently. Where we have schemes with leasehold and rented apartments we will write to the Leaseholder when we arrange for the rented apartments to have their appliances serviced. This provides them with the opportunity to use the same contractor if they choose.
Having their hard-wired electrics inspected every 5 years, again where we have schemes with leasehold and rented apartments we will write to the Leaseholder when we arrange for the rented apartments to be inspected. This provides them with the opportunity to use the same contractor if they choose.
Notifying us if they intend to sell their property, so that we can ensure the terms of the Lease are complied with.

Please see our Leaseholder guide to repairs and Leasehold Factsheet for further information. We also have our Extending your Lease factsheet should you wish to consider extending your Lease.

Please click here to view a copy of our Leasehold Handbook.

Leaseholder Re-Sales

Leaseholders (or their representatives) wishing to sell their shared ownership property will need to contact us before marketing their property.

There are some guidelines that must be followed to comply with the requirements of the Lease:

To notify us when a leasehold property is being sold so we can give advice about marketing the property and to give us the opportunity to check if we have any suitable applicants on our waiting list.

If we are unable to find a suitable applicant who wishes to proceed, the leaseholder can market their property but must ensure that we are informed of any offer made so that we can issue our application form to check they meet the necessary requirements as set out within the Lease.

Once the applicant is approved and a memorandum of sale has been issued, we will need to notify our solicitors, Wilkin Chapman so that they can issue the necessary LPE1 enquiries to the buyer’s solicitors.

Please refer to our Leasehold Factsheet for more information