TPI Level 4 Member Exam in Leasehold Management common mistakes
TPI Level 4 Member Exam in Leasehold Management · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering questions about repairing obligations, apportionment or permitted occupiers from a general idea of 'what a lease normally says' instead of identifying the operative clause type and its effect; describing the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 as the source of the repairing obligation itself rather than as a control on service charges.
Candidates memorise statute and standard precedents and revise by topic rather than by document; the lease is the sole source of the obligation, so statutory knowledge alone produces answers that are legally tidy but wrong on the facts given.
What to do instead
Before answering, state the lease provision being applied (repairing covenant, cost schedule, proportion, insurance covenant) and then test it against the statute; practise reading sanitised specimen leases and writing one-sentence clause findings, e.g. 'clause 4(2) puts internal demised-premises repair on the tenant, so the roof is landlord's under 4(1); costs recovered as a variable service charge'.
Advising on arrears recovery without applying the 18-month restriction in s.20B, and issuing demands without the s.21A summary of rights or ignoring the s.22 timetable (inspection within one month of request, copies within 21 days).
These are administrative, not substantive, rules, so they get skipped in revision; candidates focus on reasonableness and forget that a perfectly reasonable charge can be irrecoverable if demanded late or undocumented.
What to do instead
Run every recovery scenario through a fixed checklist: date cost incurred, date of written demand, whether it contained a summary of rights, whether s.20B has expired, and whether any s.22 request is outstanding; note that the summary of rights is served with the demand, not on request.
Describing a 'service charge account' run by the agent without addressing segregation - one client bank account per client or clearly designated client accounts, no mixing with the agent's own money, regular reconciliations, and a clear position on interest and on handover of balances and records when the client changes agent.
Candidates treat client money as bookkeeping detail rather than a regulatory and trust obligation, and have often only seen summaries rather than the underlying controls.
What to do instead
Learn the controls as a sequence: designated client account, receipt and allocation per property, monthly bank reconciliation to the cash book, arrears and prepayment ledgers, year-end accounts per block, and a documented transfer protocol on termination of instruction; when answering, name the control rather than the ledger.
Treating s.20 consultation as one notice and one deadline - quoting 'serve notice and wait 30 days' - and ignoring that there are three stages, the £250 per leaseholder threshold, the requirement for at least one estimate from a person not connected with the landlord, and the 21-day notification of reasons for awarding the contract.
The three-stage process (notice of intention, notification of estimates, notification of award) with different time limits is compressed in memory into a single 'consultation' step.
What to do instead
Memorise the three stages with their distinct purposes and time limits, then apply the consequence of failure (contribution capped at £250 per leaseholder per year) and the route to dispensation via the tribunal; rehearse one worked example from first notice to award.
Using 'responsible person' and 'accountable person' interchangeably, and treating the fire risk assessment as a one-off document, while omitting building registration, the safety case, the golden thread and the resident engagement strategy for higher-risk buildings.
Two overlapping regimes (the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Building Safety Act 2022) use similar vocabulary, and candidates learn the principles without the actor and threshold distinctions.
What to do instead
Build a one-page grid of duty, duty-holder, trigger threshold and evidence for each regime (fire risk assessment, asbestos management, legionella, LOLER, gas safety, building registration and safety case), and state the threshold explicitly in every answer.
Answering insurance questions purely about premium levels and section content, without first checking the lease's insurance covenant, and without addressing whether the agent is authorised or an appointed representative to arrange cover and whether commission must be disclosed.
Insurance is often revised as a soft 'shop around for a good policy' topic, so the contractual and regulatory dimensions are missed.
What to do instead
For each insurance scenario, answer in order: what does the lease require (who insures, what risks, reinstatement basis), who is placing cover and under what regulatory status, what remuneration is earned and how disclosed, and how claims and excesses flow through the service charge.
Mixing up qualifying criteria - asserting a two-year ownership rule for collective enfranchisement, or confusing the 90-year extension addition with the qualifying original term, or giving the wrong participation threshold for a right to manage company.
The 1993 and 2002 Acts contain several numeric thresholds that look interchangeable when revised by table rather than by transaction type.
What to do instead
Learn one comparison table with a column per right (lease extension, collective enfranchisement, right to manage, appointment of manager) and a row per criterion (original term, ownership period, proportion of flats, building type, exclusions), then self-test by writing the table from blank paper weekly.
Describing a course of action without the audit trail - no site visit note, no decision record, no dated file note of a contractor's instruction or of a leaseholder's report of a leak - and relying on email threads as the record.
Records feel like administration after the 'real' answer; candidates underrate how often disputes are decided on what was documented and when.
What to do instead
End every operational answer with the evidential artefact it produces: dated inspection note with photographs, signed instruction, decision log entry, and confirmation letter; treat 'what would be on the file' as a standard element of the answer, not an afterthought.
Handling a contentious issue verbally only - a phone call about a major works bill or a complaint about noise - with no written confirmation, no signposting of the internal complaints procedure and its timescales, and no reference to the redress scheme at deadlock.
Candidates default to 'communicate clearly and be empathetic' without naming the mechanism, timescale or escalation route that the question is actually testing.
What to do instead
Answer difficult-communication questions as a process: acknowledge in writing within a stated period, state what will happen and by when, confirm the outcome in writing, operate the two-stage complaints procedure with timescales, and signpost the redress scheme at the end of the internal process.
Missing the conflict when the agent's associated contractor quotes for the works, when commission is earned on insurance or on a utilities arrangement, or when a gift or hospitality is accepted, and defending the arrangement on the basis that it was 'good value'.
Value is confused with propriety; the rules bite regardless of whether the client benefits, and disclosure duties are remembered only for obvious cases such as a director's interest.
What to do instead
Screen every scenario for interest, disclosure and consent in that order: identify the interest, disclose it in writing before the decision, obtain informed consent, and record it on a register; never rely on price or quality to cure an undisclosed conflict.