The RTM Journey
1. See if your building is eligible for FREE.
Most buildings will meet the qualifying criteria for Right to Manage, but not all, so we ensure you pre-qualify your building before spending any money. With mi-RTM you will only pay once we have ensured your building is eligible to take part in the Right to Manage process, and you have decided to go ahead.
You will need to log in for this but you are under no obligation to take it any further and we don't charge for pre-qualification.
You will have to answer a few questions, most of which will be YES/NO answers. It's not an exam and it shouldn't take long.
Once you've done that we will acquire your building register from the Land Registry to check things like lease length and flat numbers. When we've confirmed everything is correct you are ready to go.
2. Join up with your fellow leaseholders.
This is where you start to create your building community as you get to know people you probably didn't know lived in the building.
You only need 50% of a building's leaseholders to be onboard with you to take your building through the RTM process. They will need to sign in and update their lease details and ensure all the information pertaining to their lease is correct. mi-RTM will tell you when you've reached 50%.
Putting letters into letterboxes or under the doors can be the most effective way of contacting your fellow leaseholders. We provide a template on mi-RTM that you can print out and use.
Another way is to download the lease for each flat in your building from the Land Registry. This will contain the names and addresses of all the leaseholders attached to a lease. However there is a cost of £3 per lease which the Land Registry will charge you.
3. Make a few decisions.
Once you have reached the magic 50% figure the system will allow you to proceed to this stage. This is the point where you need to make a few decisions around payment and who will be taking a leading role in managing your building going forward.
There is a specific fee for your Right to Manage so the more leaseholders you get now the cheaper it will be for each of you up front. There is nothing stopping you recouping money from those who come onboard after you've paid.
Once you've paid the fee the next step is to decide the name of your RTM company and who the directors will be. Remember an RTM Company is not a normal limited company but a company limited by guarantee. There are no shares. We will set it up for you and provide you will the articles of association. The RTM company will be responsible for the building once the freeholder has been removed.
Decide who will be managing your building. Only select someone with experience of managing buildings as the freeholder will have a right to push back if they can argue that their asset (your building) will not be looked after properly. Don't worry, you can change the chosen managing agent before you take the building over.
4. The legal bit.
Don't worry. We look after all the legal stuff. The information you have entered into mi-RTM up to this point will be used to generate the correct legal documentation to serve on your freeholder and your fellow leaseholders. It's important that you follow our instructions carefully at this point.
Each leaseholder who has agreed to take part in the RTM will need to officially sign up as a member of the RTM Company. We will provide a membership form tailored to each leaseholder that you can give them to complete. You must follow our instructions completely here.
This is where it gets serious. We will generate an Invitation to Participate for each leaseholder whether they have signed up or not. This is a statutory notice and we must record that it's been sent to them and any response. It doesn't matter if there is no response here, as long as you retain a record that its been sent. You can do that in mi-RTM.
Now the fun part. Here, you send the Notice of Claim to your freeholder. This is also a statutory notice and is created in the mi-RTM system from all the information you and your fellow leaseholders have provided up until now. As long as that information is correct there is little the freeholder can do to stop your RTM Company taking over the building. Make sure you have a record of sending it.
5. Taking over your building.
Take a deep breath. You've done it. There is some paperwork to complete to ensure the Land Registry have a record of the change of control, and the freeholder is allowed to claim "reasonable" costs which you will have to pay them. These costs can only relate to the claim and its aftermath. They can claim back the cost of having a solicitor read your Notice of Claim and responding to you, but very little else so the cost shouldn't be too high.
Just before the takeover date you should request your soon to be ex-freeholder notifies all the existing contractors working on the building of the change in control. At the same time, they should provide you with all the details of these contractors. You can take the freeholder to county court if they fail to comply.
Notify the Land Registry of the change of control of the building by completing the Change the Register (AP1) form.
The building is yours to manage properly. Congratulations.
mi-bot is here to help
A service charge too high? A building manager who doesn't care? We have a solution. mi-bot will tell you whether your flat and its building are eligible for Right to Manage without having to sign up for anything. It'll only take a second. Give it a try.
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