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Managing your fellow leaseholders
One of the main challenges will be in getting your fellow leaseholders involved and keeping them involved.
Perhaps the most important advice is - communicate! Keep people informed, don't hide anything, tell people what is going on, or not going on as quickly as possible, don't sit on information!
Step one of course is getting in contact with all your fellow leaseholders. You should start with existing channels. You might be a member of a tennants or leaseholders committee, perhaps the management committe, whatever, don't sideline them, you will need them on board, certainly as individuals, possibly as part of an existing leaseholders group.
But what if these groups don't exist?
The reason for your interest in purchasing the freehold now will most likley be due to:
- The freehold is about to be sold, everbody will have received a section5 A or B notice, so the matter will be on their minds.
- Or has been sold and you haven't had the relevant documents, somebody needs to do something
- The lease years are counting down to 80
In each of these cases you have a reason to approach the other leaseholders, in certain cases they will possibly even be expecting or hoping somebody will start to organise!
The easiest step is to work out a leaflet or letter and post it to all the leaseholders, by name or to 'The Occupier'
Click here for a sample that has been used successfully (MS word document)
Managing a Meeting
This is an art in itself, but show confidence and you should get through. If you are not happy about chairing a meeting, there will always be somebody who is. Better to get the person who will try to take over to be in charge from the start. You will need to brief them and keep them on target.
This isn't a business meeting, there will be lots of different characters, there will most likely be alcohol and almost certainly there will be individuals who will try to take advantage of the meeting to bring up the subject of 'this' or 'that' which are totally unrelated to purchasing the freehold.
Why not invite people to treat it as an open meeting after the freehold has been discussed?
Basics: Keep people on track. You or a designated person is the chair, the chair is in control, make that anouncement at the start of the meeting. Tell people how the meeting will work, how they will get to say their bit, keep to the agenda, be polite but firm.
After the meeting you will have a very good idea of the prospects of success. At this stage, over to you, though we have included a couple of additional sample letters within our case study.
You still need to keep canvasing people, have the target of 100% buying in so don't give up on people, you might need them.
Funding the purchase of the freehold
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