Park home owners marched on 10 Downing Street on September 18 to protest against the 10% resale commissions levied on their properties at resale by site owners. Chanting “We pay 10%. What do we want? Zero!” a delegation headed by Sonia McColl OBE, the veteran park home leader, accompanied by Sir Peter Bottomley, delivered a […]
Three quarters of Churchill Retirement flats have lost money when resold, says The Times
October 5, 2023 By
An analysis of Land Registry data has shown that three-quarters of the flats built by Churchill Retirement – owned by the McCarthy family who founded McCarthy and Stone – have resold at a loss, according to The Times. The average fall in value has been 18%, or £43,000, the newspaper said, with one flat in […]
Investors see gold in retirement housing, but oldies have taken a look and remain wary … Brighter developers are pushing for change
May 8, 2023 By
Report of APPG on retirement housing 27 March 2023 We thought scandals in retirement housing would be the downfall of the leasehold system, but that was before doubling ground rents and the Grenfell disaster By Sebastian O’Kelly, trustee LKP and founder of BetterRetirementHousing.com When Martin Boyd (LKP chair) and I began this – he the […]
Retirement housing won’t grow until oldies are offered a product that they can trust, says head of ARCO
May 8, 2023 By
By Michael Voges, CEO of the Association of Retirement Community Operators The leasehold system in retirement housing is flawed and ensures that consumers taken on all the risk of future costs at a site, Michael Voges, the CEO of ARCO told the APPG on 27 March 2023. “ARCO commissioned a YouGov poll and found that […]
Sebastian O’Kelly addresses the retirement property managers. Were you lynched? No, they agreed: leasehold ‘granny flats’ have no future
November 21, 2017 By
Not a single voice was uttered in favour of the leasehold volume retirement flat model at the annual conference of the Association of Retirement Housing Managers. The keynote speaker was Sebastian O’Kelly, joint trustee of LKP and director of BetterRetirementHousing.com, who said: “The era of knocking out “granny flats”, loading the leases with sneaky fees […]
BBC One Show warnings over retirement housing’s ‘sting in the tail’
November 25, 2016 By
The BBC One Show on prime time telly featured retirement housing earlier this week (November 22). It can be viewed here at 2.09 minutes The presenters warned that retirement housing can come with a “financial sting in the tail that can hit families at the worst possible time”. Sebastian O’Kelly, of Campaign against retirement leasehold […]
No more think tank ‘research’ into retirement housing paid for by housebuilders, please
April 29, 2016 By
The Westminster roundtable heard yesterday that think tank ‘research’ paid for by housebuilders or their trade bodies routinely avoided all reference to problems in the retirement housing sector. The event was organised by Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation / LKP, and hosted by the charity’s MP patrons Jim Fitzpatrick and Sir Peter Bottomley, and was […]
Regulator to rule on whether scandal-hit Peverel / FirstPort Retirement is fit to be a member of ARMA
March 3, 2016 By
FirstPort Retirement, formerly Peverel, should not be admitted to ARMA because it has an unaccounted-for portfolio of house managers’ flats and has a track record of misleading residents when trying to sell them. These were the arguments put on Monday to Keith Hill, a former New Labour housing minister, who is the regulator of ARMA […]
Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation is right to ‘expose outrageous behaviour of cowboys’, says Law Commissioner Stephen Lewis
July 22, 2015 By
Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation has been right to expose “expose the outrageous behaviour of cowboys” in the retirement housing sector, the Law Commissioner Stephen Lewis told MPs and key leasehold figures at Westminster. The Law Commissioner, who is presiding over an inquiry into leasehold “event fees” (triggered by events such as sale or subletting), […]
We save money living at Woodchester Valley Village … but then we do all own it ourselves
April 21, 2015 By
When his retirement village outside Stroud, in Gloucestershire, went bust – with many of the leasehold properties unsold – Peter Wilson and the other residents decided to buy the site off the administrators, raised £2 million and now run the site themselves. The result is Woodchester Valley Village, a mutual ‘not for profit’ retirement village. What the elderly residents […]
20% of ARMA members ‘walk out over new ethical scheme’
March 3, 2015 By
… and if ARMA’s Twitter feed is to be believed, two-thirds of the membership has dropped out At least of a fifth of the membership of ARMA has ditched the trade association that on January 1 brought in more rigorous membership criteria. This is the figure reported by ARMA insiders, although many think the […]
Peverel Retirement up before the ARMA regulator before it can join ARMA-Q
January 15, 2015 By
A complaint about Peverel Retirement is being considered by ARMA regulator Keith Hill even before the trade body rules on whether it meets the criteria of ARMA-Q. The complaint comes from Alex Ellison, whose mother lives in Mere Court, in Knutsford, Cheshire. It concerns Peverel’s ownership and disposal of house managers’ flats.
