How to get to 50%: organising your neighbours for an RTM claim

The legal tests for RTM are clear. The process is well-documented. For most blocks, the real challenge is not the statute — it is the spreadsheet you are building in your head as you mentally count through your neighbours and wonder whether you can genuinely get to half.

Fifty per cent of all flats. Not 50% of those you have spoken to. Not 50% of the people who came to the residents' meeting. Qualifying tenants from at least half of all the flats in your building need to be signed-up members of the RTM company before you can serve the claim notice. If you have a 30-flat block, that means 15 signed memberships. Every flat where you cannot reach the leaseholder, every leaseholder who declines, every flat that turns out to be held on a short commercial let — they all count against you.

This is the human challenge at the heart of every RTM campaign, and it deserves a practical playbook.

Why apathy is not your enemy (but it is your obstacle)

People who live in leasehold blocks are generally not hostile to the idea of taking control of their building. When you explain what RTM is — no court case, no proving wrongdoing, just leaseholders running their own building — most people respond positively, at least in principle. The problem is not opposition. The problem is inertia.

Inertia takes several forms. Some leaseholders are investors who have never met their neighbours and have no particular reason to engage with the building's governance. Some are busy people who nod along to the idea but never quite sign the forms. Some are mildly anxious about taking on responsibility and prefer the safety of passive complaint to the discomfort of active ownership. Some simply cannot be reached.

Understanding which form of inertia you are dealing with shapes how you approach each leaseholder. A buy-to-let investor living in another city needs a different conversation from a long-term resident who worries about the liability of being a director.

Step 1: map the building before you knock any doors

Before you approach a single neighbour, spend time with the Land Registry. The title register for each flat will tell you who the registered leaseholder is and what address they have registered for correspondence. In many cases this will be the flat itself, but for investor-owned flats it will often be a different address entirely.

You want to build a simple spreadsheet:

• Flat number
• Leaseholder name (from title register)
• Correspondence address
• Lease length (original, from the register or the lease itself)
• Known status: occupier / known to be sub-let / unknown

This map has a dual purpose. It tells you how many qualifying tenants you actually have (and therefore what your 50% target is), and it tells you where to find them. Do not guess at the occupier of a flat — check the register.

The Land Registry title registers are publicly available at GOV.UK for a small fee per title. It is one of the most useful investments you can make at this stage.

Step 2: find the willing few first

You do not need to persuade the whole building at once. You need to find the handful of leaseholders who are already motivated — the ones who have complained about service charges, who have asked questions about who manages the building, who have expressed frustration about repairs or poor communication. These are your early adopters.

Even three or four committed people changes the dynamic entirely. You now have a group rather than one person standing in a corridor. You can divide the building between you. You can back each other up when a sceptical neighbour asks questions you cannot answer alone. And crucially, social proof matters — leaseholders who are on the fence are more likely to sign up when they know that other people in the building have done so.

A quick message slipped under a few doors is often enough to find the willing few. Something simple: "A group of us are looking into taking over management of the building ourselves. It's a no-fault statutory right — no court case required. Would you be willing to have a brief conversation?" That is all it needs to be at this stage.

Step 3: hold a proper residents' meeting

Once you have two or three committed co-organisers, arrange a meeting. Book a time that works for working households — a weekday evening rather than a Monday morning. A neighbour's flat, a local café with a private room, a community hall: it does not need to be formal.

At the meeting, cover:

• What RTM is (the short version: leaseholders take over management, no fault required, freeholder keeps the freehold)
• What it gives you (control over who does the maintenance, how service charges are budgeted, how the building is run day to day)
• What it costs you (the legal fees to form the company and serve the notices; ongoing responsibility for running the company — though you can appoint a managing agent to handle day-to-day management if you want, you just control the contract)
• What the risks are (honestly: there is more responsibility, and getting it wrong has consequences — Section 20 consultation, insurance compliance, company filings — but these are manageable with the right tools and advice)
• What happens next (incorporating the company at Companies House, signing people up as members, serving the notices)

Leave time for questions. Have printed summaries if people want to take something away. And — critically — bring sign-up forms. The best moment to get a commitment is when someone is sitting in front of you, engaged and persuaded. If they go home to "think about it", many will never quite come back to you.

Step 4: make the case for each leaseholder type

Different residents have different concerns. Here is how to approach the main groups.

Owner-occupiers who are frustrated

These are your easiest conversations. They live in the building, they experience the poor management directly, and they are motivated. Your job is mostly to provide information and reassurance. The main concern is usually about taking on too much personal responsibility. Explain that the RTM company is a legal entity in its own right — directors owe duties under the Companies Act 2006, but personal liability is limited in the normal course of events, and many blocks use professional managing agents post-takeover while retaining strategic control.

Buy-to-let investors who are rarely on site

These are your hardest conversations, but do not write them off. Investors care about the value and condition of their asset, and a well-managed block maintains and grows value better than a poorly managed one. The service charge is also their cost — they may be paying it directly or passing it on to their tenant, but it affects their yield either way. Make the financial and property value argument. Be efficient: send a short letter or email to their registered address, give them a clear one-paragraph description and a link to more information, and follow up once.

Sub-letting leaseholders (investor-owners whose flat is occupied by a tenant)

Same approach as above. Do not confuse the sub-tenant (the person renting the flat) with the leaseholder. The sub-tenant cannot join the RTM company. The leaseholder — the person who holds the long lease — is the qualifying tenant, regardless of whether they live there.

Leaseholders who are anxious about liability

This is a legitimate concern and deserves a genuine answer. Directors of an RTM company owe duties under the Companies Act 2006, just like directors of any company limited by guarantee. They must act in the company's best interests, exercise reasonable care and skill, avoid conflicts of interest, and so on. But day-to-day management can be delegated to a managing agent or a platform like Reeve OS — most RTM companies do not run everything themselves. The director role is a governance and oversight role, not a full-time job. Being clear about this distinction reassures a lot of anxious neighbours.

Step 5: track your commitments and keep the momentum

A verbal agreement in a meeting is not the same as a signed membership form returned to you. Keep a simple tracker showing who has committed, who has forms outstanding, and who you still need to contact. Chase politely but persistently.

Momentum matters enormously. A campaign that stalls at 35% and then goes quiet will lose members, not gain them. People need to feel that this is really happening. Regular brief updates — even a message saying "we're now at 8 out of 15, six weeks to go" — maintain confidence and encourage the undecided.

Set yourself a realistic target date for reaching the threshold. It keeps the organisers accountable and signals to residents that there is a plan, not just vague interest.

Step 6: leaseholders you cannot reach

Sometimes you simply cannot locate a leaseholder. Their registered address is out of date; they do not respond to letters; the flat appears to be empty. This is frustrating but not fatal, as long as you have enough other members to reach the 50% threshold without them.

What you must not do is ignore the obligation to invite them. The law requires you to serve a notice inviting participation on every qualifying tenant who is not already a member of the RTM company, before the claim notice is served. This notice must be served correctly, which means sending it to the address recorded in the lease or at the Land Registry.

If a leaseholder simply cannot be located, document your attempts. There is a body of case law and practice around service of RTM notices on hard-to-reach leaseholders — take advice if you are unsure whether your service will be effective. The important thing is that you have made a genuine attempt, using the correct address, and that you have a record of it.

It is also worth noting that a leaseholder who does not join the RTM company is not an obstacle to the claim. The threshold is 50% membership — if you have 50% from willing leaseholders, the non-joiners do not prevent you from proceeding. They simply remain outside the company and are not members. After acquisition, they will still be leaseholders in the building and the RTM company will manage the building on behalf of all leaseholders, not just its members.

Keeping it on the record

Once you start the formal RTM process, you are creating a legal record that will matter if the freeholder challenges your claim. Keep copies of every communication — letters sent, emails exchanged, forms returned. Note dates. If you are hand-delivering notices, get confirmation of delivery or send by recorded post.

The notice inviting participation and the claim notice both have specific content requirements set out in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 and the associated regulations. Use templates reviewed by a solicitor. Do not improvise the wording of formal statutory notices.

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Reeve Start includes a participation organiser that lets you track which leaseholders have been contacted, which have committed, and which have outstanding forms. It keeps a timestamped record that can be valuable if the claim is ever questioned. Getting to 50% is a human challenge, but you do not have to manage the admin by hand.

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FAQ

We are at 47% and stuck. Can we serve the claim notice and hope someone joins before the freeholder notices?

No. The threshold must be met at the time the claim notice is served — it is a condition of the claim's validity, not a target to hit eventually. If you serve a notice without meeting the threshold and the freeholder challenges the claim, it will fail. Keep building membership until you genuinely have 50%.

A leaseholder wants to join but is currently in dispute with the freeholder over unpaid service charges. Can they still be a member of the RTM company?

Yes. There is no requirement that members be free of disputes with the freeholder. Service charge arrears are a separate matter. The leaseholder needs to hold a qualifying long lease — that is the membership condition.

Our building has 12 flats. Three are owned by the same person as part of a buy-to-let portfolio. How do they count for participation?

A leaseholder who holds leases on three or more flats counts as a qualifying tenant for only one of those flats for the purposes of the two-thirds eligibility test. For participation, the same principle applies — they can be a member of the RTM company, but they represent one member (with associated voting rights for one flat), not three. You still need qualifying tenants from at least 6 of the 12 flats as members.

Is there a time limit on how long we have to get to 50% after forming the company?

There is no statutory deadline, but the RTM company must be active and pursuing the claim. Companies House requires annual filings, and an RTM company that sits dormant for years without progressing a claim is exposed to unnecessary compliance overhead. In practice, you should aim to serve the claim notice within a reasonable period of forming the company — most active campaigns aim to serve within six to twelve months of incorporation.

What happens if a leaseholder joins the RTM company and then withdraws before we serve the claim notice?

If withdrawals drop you below the 50% threshold before you serve the claim notice, you cannot serve until you have recovered the membership. If you have already served and withdrawals then cause the company to fall below threshold, the claim may be at risk — this is one of the situations in which the First-tier Tribunal can consider costs. Keep your membership stable and serve once you are comfortably above the threshold.