As we have seen, it is no simple matter to buy a flat.Although there are now many checks and balances in place to try to ensure that the leaseholder paying a lot of money for a lease and then annual service charges on top, is not cheated and ripped off at every turn, the fact is that lessees still often have a mightily expensive and long, drawn-out fight on their hands when they want to increase the value and security of tenure of their home.

Over the past few years, very many firms of lawyers and advisers specialising in untangling leasehold law, have sprung up, not to mention the government’s LVT and Leasehold Advisory Service.The Citizens Advice Bureau and local authority Homeowner Panels also exist to fight injustices in the leasehold system.

The fact that leaseholders can now legally extend their lease to 90 years, secure the RTM and also collectively enfranchise, means that things are much better for flat owners than before.But they are by no means perfect. In very many cases, freeholders cannot be found. In my building, we have been trying to trace the freeholder of an adjoining block for several years, without success. It has cost thousands, and we are nowhere.

In other cases, freeholders may be large corporate companies who own very many blocks of flats. Again, it can be very difficult to discover who actually owns the place. Obfuscation in this area runs rife.In other situations there is a complicated layer of ownership, with a freeholder and a head leaseholder to tussle with, before the residents can get any satisfaction.Then the landlord or freeholder may own many flats within the building, which makes Collective Enfranchisement extremely difficult.

With some leasehold properties, leases have become extremely short and the cost of extending them is way beyond the pocket of the owners. This is especially the case when the owners are elderly and have only a pension to live on. Make no mistake, tough freeholders do not feel sorry for frail octogenarians who have only ten or so years left on their lease – and had no idea when they bought that the value of their homes would eventually dwindle down to nothing.

The matter of selling lease extensions and freeholds is part of the tough commercial world of property investment, and has become lucrative for freeholders and lawyers alike. It is no accident that over 50 per cent of the world’s richest people have got that way through property dealing.The continuing anomaly of leasehold tenures has also allowed freeholders and managing agents to be intimidating and threatening – and there have been very many cases of frightened leaseholders caving into the bullying demands of their freeholder.

Flatowners are themselves often to blame for their own predicament, it has to be said. Very many highly intelligent people who live in flats have no idea of the length of their lease, no idea who the managing agents are, and no idea whether or not they own a share of the freehold. Most have never heard of RTM, CE or lease extensions.It all sounds boring and convuluted, so they don’t bother to find out where they stand. Yet most lessees have paid well into six figures for a lease, the terms of which are quite unknown to them.

When I asked one friend, a journalist colleague, about the tenure of her flat, she admitted she had no idea. A few days later, she came back to me with the information that she had found out it was leasehold – and she has not only been living in the block for 11 years, but paying £600 a quarter to an unknown management company all that time.’Do you own a share of the freehold?’ I asked her. She looked mystified. ‘Well, there is a management company...’ she said vaguely. She is not alone, by any means.I hope that this book will go some way towards explaining just how complicated flat ownership can be even once the building has enfranchised.

So, is there any way of making the whole thing simpler, fairer and easier to understand?These are my suggestions.