I can’t sell my leasehold flat – I had to borrow £6,600 from family for service charges

Sam Booty, 31, bought his first flat at 23 years old with his partner Amy – but seven years on he still cannot sell it. He bought the one-bed home in Plymouth in January 2019 for £85,000. However, within two years of living there, fire safety inspections found serious defects in the building. Sam said: “It has been effectively unsaleable ever since the defects were found. There is no EWS1 certificate so buyers can’t get mortgages.” Shorts An EWS1 certificate is an assessment of a building that informs lenders and valuers about fire safety risks, particularly in buildings with cladding. In 2021, when an inspection was carried out at Sam’s flat, it found the smoke control fans had been removed, unauthorised building works had compromised the fire separation between flats – which prevents the spreading of fire and smoke – the external wall system was combustible, and fire-resisting construction was inadequate. Sam said: “My bi-annual service charges were around £766 in 2019 and £837 in 2020. Then, in July 2021, they jumped to £4,005 – so around £8,000 annually – and most of the jump was because of fire safety remediation and walking watch costs.” A waking watch is a fire safety system where trained personnel continuously patrol a building to detect fires, raise alarms and manage evacuations, typically used as a temporary safety measure. Sam believed he would be fully exempt from paying the portion of the service charges that went towards fire remediation because of the Buildings Safety Act introduced in 2022, in response to the Grenfell Fire in 2017. “It was meant to be our rescue. It creates a ‘waterfall’ of liability that puts leaseholders last, behind developers and freeholders, for cladding and construction-era fire safety defects,” he said. It also caps what leaseholders can be charged over 10 years and a £0 cap for qualifying leaseholders in low-value leases – worth under £175,000 outside London and £325,000 in the capital. According to Sam, the directors of the building his flat is in confirmed the Act’s protections applied to the building but in December 2023, debt collectors were still sent after leaseholders to recoup the service charges that were for fire remediation. He said: “I had to borrow £6,649.10 in 2024 from a family member to cover the service charge arrears I was being chased for. I have been paying £100 a month to pay it back but my family member recently absolved the debt. “I’ve been in therapy since 2022 to cope with the situation, which continues.” The reason Sam had to pay the arrears he had built up was because of a section in the Act which excludes “leaseholder-owned” buildings from the protections. Although there are 107 leaseholders in the building, the freeholder personally owns 12 of the building’s leases and the building was classed as “leaseholder-owned” and exempt from the Act entirely. He added: “That one classification shifts the entire remediation bill off the man who owns the building and onto the 107 ordinary leaseholders who don’t. And in June 2026, that same freeholder was criminally convicted and sentenced at Plymouth Crown Court for causing the fire safety failures.” During all of this, Sam decided to move out in 2023 and rent the flat out as his mental health was “at an all-time low” and charges £665 a month. “If I could have sold the flat then I would have but I couldn’t. I ended up paying £7,500 in higher-rate stamp duty as I was classed as a second-home buyer,” he said. He could have reclaimed the stamp duty providing the second property he bought became his main residence and he sold his original home within three years of buying the second property. The three-year window that would have let him reclaim his stamp duty formally closed on July 21 this year. Sam says the flat loses him money each month after having to pay letting agency fees, the mortgage, service charges, tax and general maintenance. “After the letting agent’s fee I receive £618.45 a month. Then I have to take off £380 for the mortgage, service charge is around £353 a month, tax roughly £25, plus insurance and maintenance. Net, I lose roughly £150 to £200 every month keeping a flat I never wanted to keep. “I put it into auction from around July 2025 to March/April 2026. In eight months of listing, I received one offer, substantially below what was needed even to clear the mortgage, and I withdrew it,” he added. An EWS1 certificate arrived in July, meaning lenders will now be able to lend on the flat to prospective buyers. Sam said: “Assuming everything else lines up, I’ll now be trying to sell it again, seven years after I bought it and after everything that’s happened.”