MPs have piled the pressure on ministers to regulate property managing agents as the government seeks to reform the leasehold sector.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook (pictured left) said he wouldn’t rule out the Housing, Communities and Local Government committee’s recommendation and promised it would soon set out its position on the regulation of estate, letting and managing agents.

During a Commons debate into the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, there was broad cross-party support for creating a statutory regulator with enforcement powers, rather than relying on voluntary codes. MPs also argued the government should move faster towards commonhold, strengthen the cap on ground rents and give homeowners greater control over their buildings.

Committee chair Florence Eshalomi said many managing agents were taking advantage of a captive market. “They effectively have a monopoly on individual estates, meaning that they are able to treat homeowners with sheer contempt,” she said. “In the words of one leaseholder we heard from, homeowners are left feeling ‘like cash cows’.”

Sanctions

“What we need is a regulator with teeth - one that will issue meaningful sanctions against agents that treat homeowners like a revenue stream. For the worst offenders, that should include the removal of their licence to operate.”

Eshalomi added that the reality was some leaseholders would not be able to convert to commonhold. “Some blocks will not be able to meet the 50% threshold to convert, and some blocks will have special features that mean they are not eligible. We cannot leave those homeowners behind.”

Deliver

The Lib Dem’s Will Forster agreed and called for the Bill to deliver an “independent regulator to end the wild west of property management agents”.

Although the government was willing to move on mandatory qualifications for managing agents, Labour’s Danny Beales said he worried that without an independent regulator to enforce codes of conduct, they would be of little benefit to many leaseholders.

“Without a dedicated regulator, the burden of enforcement will continue to fall on individual leaseholders - and, in future, commonholders - to take up lengthy and expensive legal action to hold their managing agents to account,” said Beales.

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