ABSTRACT
The London County Freehold and Leasehold Property Company Limited was probably the most prestigious of the residential investment companies which emerged in the inter war period. William Stern, a Harvard trained lawyer and son-in-law to Osias Freshwater, had been responsible for guiding the Freshwater Group from a modest but essentially down-market operation into a major property empire in the 10 years since he had joined the group in the early 1960s. By 1971, however, he had decided the time was right to set up on his own and he broke with the Freshwater organization. New tenants were also usually asked to sign a tenancy agreement which stated that the new rent had been mutually agreed by both parties. Although not legally binding in the sense that it replaced the permitted maximum rent for the flat, the new ‘unofficial’ rent could then be used to back up applications to rent officer for substantial increases in registered rents for existing regulated tenancies.
