- Unhappiness at Chelsea Bridge Wharf – thanks to you-know-who. St George’s Wharf and Charter Quay, Kingston, are two other riverside disasters for Peverel
For anyone thinking about buying Peverel – and the administrators are now in serious talks with a buyer – it looks like yet another flagship Thames-side development is about to slip out of its clutches.
Chelsea Bridge Wharf, beside the old Battersea Power Station site, is in the process of going for RTM, has won at LVT but Peverel is taking the issue to the Land Tribunal on appeal. It is the usual familiar story. The Tchenguiz’s Fairhold Artemis hoovered up the freehold and bought Peverel, the managing agent, and the fees started escalating.
“The residents here are all pretty well off, but they hate the idea that they are being ripped off,” said a property insider, based at the site. “Sales at Chelsea Bridge Wharf have certainly been affected by the bad reputation of the managing agent. I called up the MD of Berkeley Group – who built the landmark site – and asked him whether he had even heard about reputational risk. Problems with the management of retirement flats have absolutely trashed the reputation of McCarthy and Stone. “All housebuilders need to be aware of the damage a bad managing agent does.”
In fact, Berkeley Group, Barratt and McCarthy and Stone have all ceased to use Peverel on their new schemes, although they are stuck with them on some. The absurdity of leasehold law is shown up at Chelsea Bridge Wharf.
Tchenguiz’s Fairhold Artemis bought the freehold off the Berkeley Group for around £8.7 million. The 1,156 leaseholders would have paid around £600 million. Yet the freeholder, whose asset is worth only around 1.46 per cent of the complex, has the right to appoint … er … himself as t
