For right to manage companies
Taking management off a freeholder is the easy part to decide and the hard part to do. From the acquisition date your RTM company holds the budgets, the contracts and the compliance duties, usually with a board that has never run a building before. We work with RTM companies from day one across south Essex and east London, and we would rather talk to you before the handover than after it has gone wrong.
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The Right
Right to manage lets leaseholders take over the management of their building without buying the freehold and without having to prove the freeholder has done anything wrong. It is a statutory right under the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, and it is deliberately no-fault - you do not need a case, only the numbers.
Leaseholders form an RTM company with prescribed articles, invite the other qualifying leaseholders to join, and serve a claim notice on the freeholder. If it is not disputed, management transfers on the acquisition date. The freeholder keeps the freehold and the ground rent. Everything to do with running the building moves across.
Broadly, a building qualifies where the flats are held on long leases, at least two thirds are let to qualifying tenants, membership covers at least half the flats, and the building is self-contained. There is also a limit on how much of the floor area can be in non-residential use - and that limit recently changed.
Provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 came into force on 3 March 2025, and both matter if you are considering a claim.
The limit on non-residential floor area rose from 25% to 50%. Plenty of mixed-use developments were designed with a commercial element just over a quarter of the floor area precisely to put right to manage out of reach. Those buildings are now in scope. If your block was ruled out on this basis before, it is worth looking again.
Under the old regime the RTM company picked up the freeholder's reasonable costs of dealing with the claim, which was enough to stop a lot of boards before they started. Each side now generally bears its own costs, except where the RTM company acts unreasonably or withdraws. The financial deterrent has largely gone.
From the acquisition date
On the acquisition date the management functions in the leases transfer to your company. That means the repairing and maintenance obligations, the service charge, the contracts, the insurance arrangements and the compliance duties - all of it, at once, on a date fixed in advance.
The directors of an RTM company carry the same duties as the directors of any company, plus the responsibilities that come with running a residential building. Fire safety. Electrical testing of communal areas. Consulting leaseholders properly before larger works. Keeping accurate service charge records. Filing at Companies House on time.
Appointing an agent does not move those duties. They stay with the company. What an agent does is carry the work and give the board what it needs to decide properly. Any agent who says they take the responsibility off you is telling you something that is not true.
The handover
The handover is where RTM companies most often come unstuck, because it happens once, on a fixed date, and nobody on the board has done it before.
Things that should transfer, and that we would chase on your behalf.
If a freeholder or outgoing agent is slow to hand things over, it is better to be chasing a defined list than discovering six months later that nobody has the fire risk assessment.
Year one
The first budget is the one that sets expectations for everything afterwards, and it is the one most likely to be wrong. New boards tend to inherit a figure from the freeholder, assume it was about right, and find out in month eight that the building costs more to run than that.
We build the first budget from what the building actually needs - condition, age, plant, the compliance schedule, what the leases require and what has been deferred - rather than repeating last year's number. Where a reserve fund is thin or does not exist, we will say so plainly, because the alternative is a large unexpected bill in year three.
It is usually more comfortable to set a realistic charge in year one and explain why than to set a popular one and come back for more.
timing
You do not need an acquisition date to have a conversation. Most of what we can help with is easier before the handover than after it: what the building is likely to cost to run, what the handover list should contain, what the compliance position looks like and what the board is signing up to.
To be clear about where we stop - we are managing agents, not solicitors. Forming the company and serving the statutory notices is legal work, and it should be done by someone qualified to do it. We will happily work alongside whoever is handling your claim, and we can talk through the management side while that runs in parallel.
Our Own Trades
New RTM companies often inherit a backlog - the jobs the previous arrangement never got round to. We can work through it with our own maintenance teams, which is usually the quickest route, or manage contractors of your choosing if the board would rather. We will set out what each job would cost either way and let you decide.
Areas we cover
We work along the A127 and A13 corridor, from east London out through south Essex to the estuary.
That is a deliberate choice rather than a coverage list - being able to get to a building matters more than claiming to cover everywhere.
Basildon · Wickford · Billericay · Brentwood · Rayleigh · Benfleet · Canvey Island · Southend-on-Sea · Leigh-on-Sea · Westcliff-on-Sea · Grays · Chelmsford
If your building is nearby but not listed, get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether we can look after it properly.
Get in touch
Whether your RTM claim is in progress or you already have the acquisition date, get in touch and we will talk through what happens next.
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What we do
We manage residential blocks and estates for RMCs, RTM companies and freeholders. No sales department, no lettings arm, no distractions
Talk to Us
Whether you are setting up an RTM company or leaving an agent who stopped answering, send us the details of your building and we will come back to you with a proposal.
Nexus Premier Property Management is a block management specialist working across east London and Essex. We look after residential blocks for resident management companies, right to manage companies and freeholders.
Nexus Premier Property Management Ltd
Registered in England & Wales, company no. 17386704
15 Rockstone Place, Southampton, SO15 2EP.
T: 01268 975436
E: info@nexusppm.co.uk