Trustees don’t seem to care about long term lessees having their home taken

We view the intransigent attitudes, conduct of the CPTB members and their treatment of the lessees as contemptible. My wife and I are both well past retirement age.  We are both still working.  Because we have to. We have not had any kind of holiday in 5 years and the earlier ones we have had were subsidised by our children. It is tough to meet the monthly rental payments.

Let’s start with how we ended up here. When my wife and I discussed how much the lease may increase by with the CPTB representative administrator and a land agent in 2005, they confidently agreed that there would be a 3-5-fold increase in the forthcoming review round.  We calculated that we could (just) afford) a five-fold increase in the lease amount and proceeded with the purchase.  Sadly, we were misled by the people who provided this information.  The valuers’ review produced just over a nine-fold increase.

Ever since, our weekly stressors include our struggle to afford the monthly lease amount, as well as trying to save for our next (freehold) home.  It has become apparent that, at present, the saleability of these leasehold properties is at a level some 50-75 per cent below the purchase prices and we stand to lose a significant portion of our equity, hard-earned over a lifetime of public service.

We continue working – without any hope of stopping in the short term - so that we can afford the lease payments, afford our monthly living expenses and try to save a modest amount on an annual basis.  We are desperate to free ourselves from the dreadful situation that occurred when the leasehold values of such properties were set at amounts that was way out of whack with reality (As shown by the CPTB’s inability to lease the land at 46 Maungakiekie Avenue, even at a significantly reduced value).

We have been forced to maintain an extremely modest lifestyle, permeated by constant concern and stress about how we can cope financially in the future with the highly depreciated sale (or forfeiture) of our Campbell Road property, and what we will do after that.

I wish the members of the CPTB would do what other similar boards (ADHB, Dilworth, St Johns) did to enable tenants to escape from the Glasgow-type lease and either enable freeholding or pay for our improvements.