His flat was damaged by severe water damage which he discovered was caused by a number of unusual obstructions to the building’s guttering.
Unlike freehold properties, a potential downside to owning flats it that they are usually leasehold properties, so even though a person has bought the property and has a mortgage bill to show for it, it often forms part of the overall freehold property. In their role as ‘property owner’, the freeholder is responsible for maintenance and insurance of the overall property including making sure the common areas of the property (eg the communal entrance and corridors, the roof, the path to the front door) are kept in a good state of repair. The building should be insured against fire, destruction and damage including subsidence.
The leaseholder will generally be responsible for the ‘internals’ of their individual flat and any damage caused to the contents and fixtures including carpets, doors and general redecoration.
This is fine until the freeholder disappears, as was the case in a recent claim for ‘ingress of water’ received by Total Landlord Insurance. The freeholder of this particular block of flats has not been seen or heard of in over 5 years, so when water started entering one of the apartments, the landlord whose property it affected had to investigate the cause himself, only to find a very blocked gutter from which he subsequently removed newspapers, a Persian rug and a table!
The leaseholder had tried to resolve the problem outside of his own landlord insurance but when he failed to locate, or get in contact with, the freeholder whose responsibility it is, he needed to mitigate his losses. He used his landlords contents insurance to cover the damage to the internal wall and window for which the claim is likely to be settled in the region of £2000, but was forced to pay out for the repairs to the building himself to avoid the problem reoccurring, as this would only be covered under the freeholder’s buildings insurance.
Eddie Hooker of Total Landlord Insurance advises other leaseholders to “Check the lease agreement to see who is responsible for maintenance and insurance of the building. The majority of the time this will be the freeholder but occasionally this can be the leaseholder or a specially formed management company to which leaseholders make contributions to a fund which deals with these expenses.
Also, make sure you know who the freeholder/management company of the building are, where they are and their contact details should you need to get in touch with them.”
