A couple who said that their freeholder’s answers on an LPE1 had scared off buyers are facing a £180,000 bill after a judge rejected their claim.
Prof Daslav Brkic (pictured outside court) and his wife Paola Salmoria told Central London County Court that their freeholder and upstairs neighbour, Douglas Palin, had caused offers for their flat to be withdrawn when he revealed issues including rows about floors and windows.
The couple sued for £80,000, their barrister arguing that the answers on the LPE1 were a breach of their right to “quiet enjoyment” of the property, as they could now not sell their flat other than at a knockdown price.
But they face paying Mr Palin’s £45,000 legal bill, on top of their own of around £135,000, after Judge Nigel Gerald said the freeholder had done nothing wrong to flag up historic and factual issues. The judge also pointed out the couple had failed to mention known issues in their TA6 and TA7 forms.
“It is very important for a prospective purchaser to know what they’re buying, what they’re letting themselves in for,” the judge said, adding he could see no reason why the couple could not now sell the flat, since the most serious issues were resolved nearly two years ago.
The court heard that Mr Palin is the freeholder of a Victorian conversion in Finsbury Park, London. He lives on an upper floor while the ground floor and garden had been sold by a previous tenant to Prof Brkic and his wife in 2013.
The couple’s refurbishment of the flat then resulted in a series of disputes. Prof Brkic said from the witness box that Mr Palin had taken an “extraordinarily hierarchical, gloating and somewhat feudal approach” to his position as freeholder. He had requested overly frequent inspections and was “unreasonable and antagonistic”, causing them immense stress.
The court heard that disagreements between the parties included Mr Palin taking the couple to a tribunal in 2021 for a breach of their lease in tearing up carpets, where the tribunal found in favour of Mr Palin while another hearing took place after Prof Brkic objected to repeated inspections, with Mr Palin losing.
Other complaints by Mr Palin included the couple removing Victorian burglar bars from the windows, replacing timber sash frames with UPVC, and the way their electricity cables were attached to a fuse box in a communal area.
Floor joists had been cut into without permission to make pipe conduits, and Mr Palin also criticised the couple for an unsealed door which, he said, allowed “foul” cooking odours to permeate the common parts of the building.
In 2023, the couple decided to sell and it was during that process that problems with the leasehold plan emerged, seemingly putting their bathroom on Mr Palin’s property. A £680,000 purchase fell through in early 2023, and another for £640,000 collapsed a few months later.
Their barrister, Tom Morris, told the court that, “to their horror”, Mr Palin had put a “litany of complaints” in the LPE1. These included the resolved carpet argument, historic disagreements about the windows and burglar bars, and the bathroom issue, which had been a “mistake” on a plan.
Giving evidence, Mr Palin agreed that some of the complaints were resolved before he filled in the document, but insisted the issues were genuinely of concern. Replacing historic sash windows with UPVC in a Victorian property could have affected the value of the property as a whole.
His barrister, Andrew Skelly, said Mr Palin had been “entitled, and indeed prudent, to make the disclosures.”
In judgment, Judge Gerald said Mr Palin had been within his rights in saying what he did in the questionnaire. “All the LPE does is set out essentially matters of historical fact,” he said. “There is no suggestion he acted dishonestly or in bad faith, or that in any material respect any of the material provided was misleading.
“I simply cannot understand how a landlord providing essentially factual information, primarily requested by a prospective purchaser, can be a breach of covenant [or] how it can in any way interfere with a sale.”
Prof Brkic and his wife had also themselves failed to mention issues in TA6 and TA7 forms, he added.
“To lay this entirely at the door of Mr Palin based on the LPE1 is, in my judgment, unreal and without foundation,” he continued.
It could not be said that the disclosure of the issues by Mr Palin made the flat unsellable on the open market even now, the judge found.
By August 2024, all the issues with the exception of the cooking odours and the electrical cabling had been formally resolved.
“Given that situation, I find it difficult to understand why the property could possibly not be sold,” he said.
He ordered the couple to pay Mr Palin’s costs estimated at £45,000, with £30,000 within 28 days. The court heard the couple’s own costs came to £135,000.
Image courtesy of Champion News
