The UK flammable insulation and cladding materials on the outside of apartment buildings debacle:
"Imagine owning an apartment in a high-rise building that is suddenly deemed to be a fire trap.
Next, you discover that you and all your neighbors will have to pay tens of thousands of pounds each to have the flammable insulation and cladding materials on the outside of the building replaced.
You cannot sell the apartment because lenders are refusing to write a mortgage on the apartment.
To cap it off, you’re told you have to pay hundreds of pounds a month, in the midst of a global recession — in addition to the mortgage payments and other costs — to cover the costs of round-the-clock fire-patrols to make sure the building you occupy doesn’t suddenly go up in flames.
... Following the deaths of 72 people in the fire on June 14, 2017, at the 24-story Grenfell Tower in London that had been fitted with highly flammable insulation and cladding, similar materials have been uncovered at thousands of towers across the UK.
...The new building fire safety rules and regulations that came into effect after the Grenfell fire ... have sparked a host of unintended consequences for the UK’s apartment market.
Mortgage lenders have refused to offer loans for any properties in high-rise buildings that have been flagged as firetraps, or have yet to be inspected but could prove to be firetraps.
As a result, the vast majority of the UK’s high-rise apartments, which sit at the bottom of the property ladder, are for the present moment impossible to sell or buy.
... Last week, The Daily Telegraph, using data from the New Build Database, suggested that as many as many as 4.5 million buildings could be affected.
Most of the buildings have yet to be inspected, leaving millions of leaseholders trapped in financial limbo.
Those whose buildings have already been deemed unsafe are having to pay hundreds of pounds per month, in the midst of a global economic crisis, to cover the additional service costs of having 24-hour fire patrols at their buildings.
For some, the costs are too much to bear.
... Total costs are expected to reach upward of £15 billion to rectify the safety issues in all of the affected buildings.
But the government has so far only pledged £1.6 billion."