Cladding scandal: 'I'm a reluctant landlord after cladding scandal dropped value of properties to £0'
Doug Duffin, a leaseholder at a flat complex in the middle of Leeds, is one of thousands of people across Britain who have become reluctant landlords as a result of the cladding crisis.
In 2018, shortly after being made redundant, Mr Duffin saw an opportunity to retire and help his son who was living in multi occupancy private accommodation in Leeds.
Mr Duffin added: “We bought the apartment using part of my redundancy and part of my pension with the understanding that our son would buy it as soon as able.
“In 2019 we were told that our building was covered in unsafe cladding and an inflammable render coating. The value of our properties dropped to £0, we could not sell and our costs started to skyrocket.
“I didn’t realise back in 2019 that the cladding crisis was going to take up so much time and throw so many challenges at myself and my fellow leaseholders,’’ he said.
“Financially our service charges exploded to very challenging levels. Our insurance charges went from £59,000 to £350,000 a year (that’s an increase of over £1,400 per annum per leaseholder) and this was only one element of our costs.”
Mr Duffin, who now lives in Milton Keynes, said he had been lucky that Hilary Benn, the Labour MP for Leeds South, had helped drive the case for funding for leaseholders.
“Even though new legislation in 2022 means that costs could not be passed on to leaseholders any further, due to the layered complexity of funding and different contractors, managing companies have been unable to close our annual accounts since 2020 or even tell us how much we are owed for any underspends against service charges applied over last five years.”
“My son moved out with his girlfriend last year and we have relied upon tenants since then to help cover our costs. However, five years on, our properties remain unsellable.
“Whilst we have been very lucky to have a very knowledgeable and supportive managing agents who have helped us along the way, the stress has been too much. I went back to work during Covid, working for the NHS and had a heart attack in 2021. Was it caused by this? Who knows, but it didn’t help.
“At the moment it’s looking like 2027 will be the earliest that I will be able to sell our property, nearly 10 years after this crisis began.”
Mr Duffin added: “In order to end the cladding scandal the Government must ensure that all developers are held to account and all buildings cladding work is completed as they have stated by 2030.
“Furthermore, the cladding scandal won’t be ended until ridiculous levels of building insurance are not significantly reduced.
“We cannot do this if existing leaseholders are still paying levels of ground rent that won’t allow buyers to obtain mortgages.”
Mr Benn said: “The Government is taking action to speed up the unacceptably slow pace of remediation and offer an end in sight for residents who have suffered for too long, including my constituents who are still living in unremediated buildings in Leeds.”
The situation is most difficult in cases where developers or builders have gone bust or disappeared or are simply failing to live up to their responsibilities, Mr Benn added.
“In our Remediation Acceleration Plan we have set out: tough new targets for when unsafe buildings must be remediated; new penalties and criminal sanctions on building owners who refuse to take action to fix unsafe buildings; and steps to identify buildings that must be made safe.
This is being backed by investment in enforcement so that local authorities, fire and rescue authorities and the Building Safety Regulator have the capacity to tackle hundreds of cases per year.”