The difference
Nobody is in charge of your building
A managed block sounds harder and is usually easier. A converted house has no rulebook, which means nothing is forbidden and nothing is arranged either.
People moving into a purpose-built block complain about the bureaucracy — the written notice, the lift booking, the permitted hours, the deposit against communal damage. It is genuinely tedious and it has one enormous advantage: every question has an answer, and somebody's job is to give it.
An Ealing conversion has none of that machinery. There is no agent, no booking system, no written hours and no deposit. That sounds like freedom, and in practice it means every single arrangement has to be made person to person, in advance, by somebody.
The difference
No manager, no rulebook
A managed block sounds harder and is usually easier, because somebody is in charge and the rules are written down. An unmanaged conversion has no rulebook, which means nothing is forbidden and nothing is arranged either. What replaces the rulebook is knocking on doors in good time — and that is a job we would rather do than leave to you on the morning.
A managed block has
A converted house has
Work out who the freeholder is
Three common situations, and they behave very differently.
- The freeholder lives in one of the flats. Easiest — reachable, and they care about the hall.
- Share of freehold. The flats jointly own it, so a decision means asking the other leaseholders. A conversation, not an application.
- An absentee or corporate freeholder. Often unreachable, which matters only if you need something structural.
What actually needs permission
For an ordinary move, nothing. You have a right of access to your own flat and the communal parts exist to be used — including by people carrying furniture.
What does need asking is anything touching the fabric of the building: a hoist bracketed to the front wall, a window removed to get a piece out, or a communal door taken off its hinges. Establish that early, because it changes what is worth packing.
What replaces the rulebook
Knocking on doors, in good time. Telling the other flats which day it is, roughly when the hall will be busy, and that the bins are moving and coming back.
It is almost too simple to write down, and it is the single highest-return thing anybody does before a conversion move. We do it as part of the job — but if you are on speaking terms with your neighbours, your version works better than ours.
Tell us which part of the house you are
Both addresses, roughly how much there is, and which flat — ground, upper, top or garden. That one word tells us more about the job than the room count does.