Tenement repairs

[JustAnotherWednesday]

I live in a tenement with 15 flats. Originally, there were 16, but at some point, two flats were combined into one, reducing the total to 15. We're facing some expensive repair work in the stairwell, and I'm unsure whether I should be paying 1/16th or 1/15th of the bill. I believe I need to check my neighbors' deeds to be certain, but I've had difficulty accessing them. Does anyone have advice on how I should proceed?

Is there no factor you can contact? Usually, tenements have a factor to oversee repairs and maintenance and cover overall building insurance.

Can recommend the Under One Roof website

We have no factor.

I will take a look at the Under One Roof website, thanks.

Your deeds should state what you are responsible for. Your deeds should give the proportion that you need to.pay.

My deeds seem to indicate that my share is still 1/16th, but the neighbour that is organising the repairs is dividing the bill by 1/15th. To make matters more tricky, the person living in the double flat is quite elderly now, but I can’t afford to keep paying more than I am liable for, but this may make me unpopular.

Agree with @OldJohn your deeds should state what proportion you need to pay.

You can check the Burdens section of their title - can be downloaded for a small fee from https://scotlis.ros.gov.uk/ which is the Land Register for Scotland.

I'd be surprised if the Deeds had been changed from 1/16 to 1/15 as you would usually have to have all agreed or at least a majority. Voting rights and procedures should be in the Deeds as well but if there are still two separate titles for the joined flat, it would likely remain as the original allocation of 1/16 each.

It looks like their deeds may be still on the sasine register, so it’s going to cost at least £30 plus VAT to look at their deeds. I’ve actually been warned that they may need to check all the flats on their level of the building. However, I can’t find anything in my own deeds to suggest a change of the share of liability/burden was ever made, surely there would be one if a change had been made?

Can you look at this from a pragmatic point of view ? How much is the difference to you in terms of the repair costs ? If your share was £10k then 1/16 would be £625 and 1/15 would be £666.67. As you say there are costs to be incurred in making enquiries into the Deeds and it might just not be cost effective to challenge it.

Could you consider paying 1/15 making it clear that you are doing so under protest and payment does not constitute your agreement or acceptance of the allocation ?

Principle is all well and good but the amounts involved may not be worth contesting.

Having said to be practical, this might not always apply. Do you have block insurance ? If so, how would the other owners view the allocation if a total loss was incurred - would they expect 1/15 of the payout or 1/16 ? Because this may focus their minds looking at it from this perspective

The difference in price is going to be in the low hundreds, so not an amount I can afford to just write off. No, there is no block insurance.

I thought it was a legal requirement to have block insurance - that's the reason most people have a factor

We don’t have a factor. We are each responsible for our own insurance.

We had a similar issue but it was a retail unit that had two shares. They (the retail unit) kept saying it was cost per 8 shares, we kept reminding them it was cost per 9 shares, and they were responsible for 2/9 not 1/8. Stick to your guns, it’s not worth setting a precedent in case a very large repair is needed in the future.

1/16th. If one flat is made up of 2 units combined then they need to pay 2/16ths

Your share will be 1/16th of the repair costs unless all of the owners agreed to a change. I suppose this could have happened before you bought your flat but I can’t see it. Have never known a situation where this has happened. Combining two flats doesn’t change the owners’ shares. It can be a wee bit of a grey area with services e.g. communal door entry system but not repairs.

Given the costs involved to you, you either stick to the points that -

1.Your Deeds set out that your obligation is 1/16th

1. That the flat in question remains under two titles and therefore each flat remains subject to 1/16th each

1. That if the flats have been combined into one title, that the allocation for communal repairs should be based on square footage which would still result in the flat in question paying a larger share.

If you can't reach agreement you would need to consider approaching all owners to appoint a factor to deal with these issues going forward or enlist the help of the local authority to get the repairs done.

I would be seriously reluctant to get involved in such substantial and costly repairs involving 15 separate parties without a factor or local authority involvement.

The Under One Roof website is really good with guidance and templates but outwith that, the most cost effective route would be to appoint factors.

Either way this is going to cost something to resolve which might be worth it for long term peace of mind

I appreciate you are all responsible for your own insurance but you ( each) need to make sure that the buildings cover is sufficient to replace the entire block should there be a total loss. My understanding is that the rebuild cost included in general domestic buildings insurance doesnt cover this and that's why specialist insurance is required. This is one of the (many) reasons I and other owners went down the fairly tortuous route of changing factors a couple of times rather than self - factoring because getting adequate buildings insurance for blcoks of flats is quite complicated.

But agree that from my reading of burdens that the owner of the combined flat is responsible for 2/16 share not 1/15. A change to the burdens and how the share of responsibilities is detailed on the deeds would need to have been agreed at some point by the owners at the time.

It's fairly common in Scots tenement blocks to only be vaguely aware of who a handful of your neighbours actually are, never mind who actually owns the property. Factors for stairwells in Victorian tenements in Edinburgh are practically unheard of. One of the main reasons Council employees were able to exploit Statutory Notices for so long is that they are pretty much where most necessary communal repairs end up due to the fact it's almost impossible to get agreement and payment from 12-15 flats in a block due to the number of transient tenants and absentee landlords/owners.

Please note that this is Scotland so very different. Factors are much less common.

Your local council can provide advice on Shared Repairs, including potentially paying for missing shares. Check their website.

I have honestly never heard of a tenement block without a factor in Glasgow. I thought there had to be overall building insurance to cover things like subsidence, etc. Maybe it's more common now to have an owners association to oversee that sort of thing.

I used to work in the building trade and many tenements did not have a factor. The owners did not want to pay the factor's fees and knew that many factors added a percentage onto any bills for repairs
In this case I would think that every person, except the one with the double flat, would want to pay 1/16th of the bill.

Like @OrangeCrusher I think it's rare in Glasgow for there not be a factor although I do think the number of unfactored properties is increasing.

I suspect that many newer owners are not really aware of the shared responsibilities that come with tenement ownership. Certainly in my experience the owner who blithely announced we'd be changing factor had no idea that this could only be done after holding a quote meeting as detailed in the deeds. She was completely ignorant of the correct legal process - and then p**d off back to Australia 🤔

If you are having to cover the costs of another owners share you can register a notice of potential liability for costs against the property and next time the property is sold you all will get what's owed.

No. What you're saying is just wrong. That doesn't apply in traditional tenements. If it's a modern block it might be factored and factor's fees due but insurance won't cover repairs.