“I was a leaseholder, I owned a property in a block of flats in Peacehaven and the freeholder was always either putting up scaffolding, repairing something, taking down scaffolding, or putting it back up a week later etc and as a leaseholder you must pay for that. It wasn’t a productive way of spending our money and we weren’t really in control of it, I also had some family members that owned property in the same building, so we clubbed together with the other leaseholders and purchased the freehold from the freeholder.
We decided to run the building ourselves and was asked if we wanted a managing agent, but we said no and made it our business to really understand the legislations. The breaking point was when we were offered a business to buy which only had about ten or so block management properties, from somebody else’s portfolio, but as we knew the legislations it made sense for us to buy it. At the time I was still at university studying for my degree and the other family members were getting a bit tired of dealing with the leaseholders etc, they were commercial people and weren’t used to dealing with the public etc.
I wasn’t in a position to buy them out as I was still at university and wanted to finish my degree, so I went and worked for a firm in Lewes called Clifford Dann and we sold the business to them. I worked my way up as a partner and then decided to pack up with them and concentrate on my own portfolios in 2015 although Charles Cox was formed in 2010 as we already had some portfolios that we didn’t merge with the sale to Clifford Dann.
The rest is history – it started with me being on my own in a little poky office in Seaford and we’ve now been in this existing office in Newhaven since 2018 with a total of three offices, one in Eastbourne, one in Brighton and this one in Newhaven.”
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Charles Cox Property Management is a local firm of managing agents based on Denton Island, Newhaven, covering areas from Brighton to Eastbourne. We are the Managing Agents for numerous Leasehold Developments and Unadopted Roads, and we can even help with questions about Assured Shorthold Tenancy’s (AST).
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