Stapleton's Real Estate Management Practice

Anthony Banfield

• Publisher: Estates Gazette
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135329211
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Construction Law
• Index: Law

Previously known as Estate Management Practice, the fourth edition of this work has been renamed to reflect current market practice and to embrace the discipline of corporate real estate. This book provides a comprehensive study of the management of urban property and is divided into three parts.

Part one considers the diverse nature of the many types of estates and different aspects and interpretations of the management task. Part two concentrates on the management of leased property, repairs, service charges and rent reviews and the statutory framework within which the landlord and tenant relationship has developed. Part three is concerned with the positive management covering both technical skills, such as portfolio performance, and the professional practice environment in which they are exercised.

Stapleton's Real Estate Management Practice is written both for advanced students and practitioners. It provides a firm basis for management affecting the decision-making hierarchy from tenant to property, to portfolio, to proprietary unit.

While retaining the format of previous editions, it has been updated to reflect the many changes in the law, practice, technology and the market place since the previous edition. In addition, this new edition highlights factors that influence the enhancement of different types of property and the various strategies involved in managing properties from both owners' and occupiers' point of view.

Part 1

Urban Estates

1

Growth of Urban Estates in the UK

Introduction

Land ownership has, over many centuries, brought opportunities to influence a wide range of economic, social and political aspects not directly related to the land itself. Some estates such as those of the church, the Crown and livery companies have existed since the Middle Ages with only limited changes in their land-holdings. Others have been created in a generation, due to the energy of one individual and special factors unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future. Urban estates have been shaped by the interaction of a number of relatively well-recorded historical pressures, though different interpretations can be placed upon the motives of the parties and the merits of the outcome at various decisive stages. Economic and social development, often represented through changes in case law and statute, have adjusted the balance of rights and duties between occupiers, owners and the general public, with serious financial consequences for the groups involved. Estate managers acting on behalf of each of the parties need to interpret the factors influencing urban property holdings in a comprehensive way, and relate these to the rationale of individual estates.

Land use and estate management decisions on individual parcels are influenced by the history of occupation in both a physical and legal sense, each generation reacting to new opportunities and simultaneously creating new restrictions. The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, is a pertinent reminder of the obligations attached by the nation to the recording of the past as part of the redevelopment process. The Environmental Protection Act 1990, Environment Act 1995 and Disability Discrimination Act 1995 illustrate newer restrictions.

Estate management practice is influenced by procedures developed over many years and exercised by a profession evolved over several hundred years with all the strengths and weaknesses inherent in such groups. The success of the landlord and tenant system has resulted in a smaller proportion of owner-occupied commercial property than elsewhere in the Western world and as a consequence highly developed procedures for the representation of the interests of both landlord and tenant and the implementation of their agreements.

The many subtle factors influencing the growth of the profession and the complex historical forces shaping urban estates can only justify limited space within the context of a study of estate management practice. A convenient, but not necessarily comprehensive, approach has been used whereby up to 1945 this has been viewed more in terms of the growth of the profession and thereafter more in terms of the effects of the factors shaping urban estate management practice.

Growth of urban estate management

In mediaeval times, the great families, the church and the Crown placed considerable responsibility and sufficient trust as they considered prudent in their stewards, who had overall charge of the management of their estates, with bailiffs physically directing and controlling the management of individual parcels of land.

Some advice issued to stewards in the 13th century suggests that the principles are unchanging:

The seneschal of lands ought to be prudent and faithful and profitable and he ought to know the law of the realm, to protect his lord’s business and to instruct and give assurance to the bailiffs who are beneath him in their difficulties. He ought two or three times a year to make his rounds and visit the manors of his stewardship, and then he ought to inquire about the rents, services and customs, hidden or withdrawn, and about franchises of courts, lands … and other things which belong to the manor and are done away with without warrant by whom and how; and if he be able let him amend these things in the right way without doing wrong to any, and if he be not, let his show it to his lord, that he may deal with it if he wish to maintain his right.

During the 16th century changes in social and trading conditions and the rise of a growing number of smaller landlords created an environment in which the science of the measurement, recording and presentation of boundaries was able to develop. A book of 1582 entitled A Discovery of Sundrie Errours and Faults Daily Committed by Land Meters indicates that even then some criticism was being made of the work of surveyors. No doubt the author, Edward Worsop, was considered a very dangerous fellow; he even suggested training, examinations and the need for a license to practice!

By the close of the 16th century the rapid rise in the demand for land measurers resulted in the surveyor acquiring a reputation as an inquisitive landlord’s man, much distrusted by commentators of the time. It was a logical progression from the mechanics of the making of maps and plans to their use for the purposes of the management of estates. This happened relatively slowly and it was not until the middle of the 18th century that business came forward in sufficient quantities and in a form which enabled practices to be created and sustained beyond the lifetime of individuals.

Throughout the 17th century, the surveyor in his various forms was playing a relatively humble role instructed by attorneys, stewards, conveyancers and architects. During the latter part of the 18th century some lawyers devoted more and more time to their role as stewards managing estates and some land surveyors were successful in obtaining steadier income from regular management of the estates they surveyed.

The 18th century saw the start of the Enclosure movement and by 1801 a committee of the House of Commons was in favour of the appointment of a valuer as well as a surveyor in every Enclosure Bill. At the same time the Ordnance Survey was growing in importance, not without some friction between the military surveyors and civil surveyors, this state mapping service reduced the need for the private land surveyor’s work on enclosures. The industrial revolution was also gaining momentum with urbanisation and the construction of, first the canals, and then the railways.

The first half of the 19th century can be identified as the period in which the surveyor’s previously chief occupation, land measurement, had superimposed upon it a much wider range of activities, all of which were due to aspects of the industrial revolution. The building of the railways required individual Acts of Parliament; their promoters became skilled in the drafting of these measures and the preparation of the necessary evidence. Their surveyors had considerable impact on the individual resident agents with whom they negotiated along the proposed route. Between 1850 and 1870 over 100,000 acres were purchased for railway purposes, similar to the activity of the motorway programme of the 1960s and early 1970s. Land agents of agricultural estates found that meeting the demand for urban growth offered greater returns than agricultural rents but by applying agricultural practice where possible, retained ownership of developed land for their client, thus creating the unique London estates.

All this activity created a considerable demand for the skilled surveyor, and while the eminent grew in reputation many incompetent persons sought to exercise the surveyor’s skill. In the same year that the now RIBA was created, 1834, a Land Surveyors’ Club was formed in London for active promotion of the profession; they sought to exclude resident agents from membership, who were servants of a master rather independent consultants.

In the spring of 1868, 20 surveyors met in London and by November of that year had formed the Institute of Surveyors and held their first ordinary general meeting at 12 Great George Street. Three-quarters of the original members had been involved in valuation, negotiation and arbitration for railway works but all the branches of surveying were represented within their practices. Some of their practices in both London and the provinces had been established for a century before the formation of the Institution and its member firms possessed considerable maturity.

The most eminent of the 19th century surveyors was John Clutton whose life spanned almost the whole century. Between 1845 and 1851 he was appointed surveyor for the southern half of England for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Adviser on the Royal Forests and Crown Receiver for the Midlands and the South of England. A close second was Robert Collier Driver, who between 1860 and 1875 was responsible for a million pounds of property sales per annum. In Bristol, William Sturge was equally active, acquiring land for the Bristol and Exeter Railway, Somerset and Weymouth Railway and South Wales extension of the Great Western Railway.

The latter half of the 19th century saw tremendous growth in urbanisation as the new municipal authorities acquired land for local urban infrastructure in much the same way as railways acquired land for the national infrastructure. The Surveyors’ Institution had considerable influence on policy, legislation and administration and was mentioned in the Metropolis Management and Building Act (Amendment) of 1876. The surveyors gained a charter in 1881, which assisted them in their aims of intellectual advancement, social elevation and moral improvement.

The Institution was represented at the Congrès International des Géomètres held in Paris in 1878, where it was suggested that, in order to practise, surveyors should be required to obtain a government diploma; the rest of Europe accepted this principle. This did not accord with British practice, but the surveyors did set up a system of qualifying exams for new members in time to support the application for the charter.

Codes of conduct and the role of local branches were developing in the early part of the 20th century. The Liberal Budget of 1909 posed questions on land taxation which really only had to be faced 40 years later; though by then professional bodies had appreciated the need to avoid arguing their case on political grounds.

During the 1914–18 war agriculture and industry flourished in an effort to meet the needs of war. Speculative development of owner-occupied housing, reflected the concepts of the garden city movement of the 1920s, and the start of the decline of the rented housing stock. At the same time among the then two dozen or so publicly quoted property companies the seeds of commercial and industrial development were being sown, the latter often based on War Department surplus. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Table of Cases
• Table of Statutes and Statutory Instruments
• Part 1: Urban Estates
• Part 2: Lease Management
• Part 3: Positive Management
• Appendix A: Corporate Strategy
• Appendix B: Strategic Issues for Management Surveyors
• Appendix C: Flow-chart through Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 — Part II
• Appendix D: A Code of Practice for Commercial Leases in England and Wales
• Appendix E: Framework for Operational Property Management
• Appendix F: Advisory Guidelines for Commercial Property Management
• Index