Edinburgh Walldeck Properties
Schedules of Dilapidation
We have advised this property company on 6 Edinburgh listed building acquisitions and subsequent Dilapidations claims. In the case of 12 Atholl Crescent the building was ‘A’ listed and set within one of Edinburgh’s foremost Georgian crescents. During our Pre Acquisition Survey we identified a shortfall in the maintenance regime and works were required to bring the property into “good and tenantable” order compliant with the Tenant’s Lease.
We advised that the Landlord pro-actively respond to this failing and were instructed to prepare a Schedule of Dilapidations. This process involved a detailed review of the Lease documentation as well as a further more detailed inspection of the building before we could prepare what was an ‘interim’ (during lease term) Schedule for serving on the Tenant. This lengthy schedule detailed on an item by item basis the maintenance shortfalls where a repairing liability existed. The Schedule was then, somewhat unusually, accepted in its entirety by the Tenants Agent, who was instructed by their client, a well known law firm, to arrange for the necessary remedial works which were competitively tendered at just over £150K. We thereafter monitored the works through to completion and signed them off.
Due to the success of this form of pro-active property management, we secured in excess of £750K worth of remedial works to properties owned by this Client over a period of years. It is quite clear that far too many Tenants escape without being held properly to account for the manner in which they occupy and in turn maintain properties. As a converse, far too many Tenants unknowingly enter into a Lease with insufficient appreciation of the property they are about to let and just as importantly without understanding their liabilities under that lease. This all too often results in a Tenant tacitly accepting liabilities they should not!
Footnote
The client subsequently sold their Edinburgh portfolio and in so doing benefitted significantly from the Dilapidations exercise by ensuring that his properties were in the best condition they could be at the time of sale.
