Flat owners ‘seething’ at £8.8k a year service fee
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d8v3er4dyo
Posted by insomnimax_99
Flat owners ‘seething’ at £8.8k a year service fee
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d8v3er4dyo
Posted by insomnimax_99
30 Comments
Surely with that many flats, and with a service charge that was already pretty steep at over £200 a month, they’d have built up a sinking fund that was large enough to cover that repair already?
I know in my unit £30-40 of our monthly fee goes into one at any rate, this is a small six flat block but it’s gotta be in the tens of thousands by now. They must have six figures easily.
Definitely sounds legitimate and not just a cash grab
Creamed off in “fees” by Kleptocratic managing agents and the freehold owner.
Unscrupulous companies will always find a way to screw people over. This is one of the areas where more regulation is actually required to limit hikes like this. When a company tries crap like this, they should be banned from managing other properties as well. The directors need to be banned too to stop them setting up new companies.
Leasehold reform is such an easy win for Labour in that the only people who oppose it are unlikely to ever vote for Labour anyway but overhauling it has broad support and appeal across Labour’s likely voting base.
And yet they seem to have no intention of doing anything.
Horrible situation. Not a builder but surely replacing balcony flooring wouldn’t cost 6k would it?
What’s weird about this story is that normally if there were major structural works to do the managing agent would run a Section 20 consultation. They instead seem to be trying to raise the money via massively hiked service charges. I wonder if they tried a Section 20 and it failed, but the work is needed anyway, or they’re trying to get around the legislation.
Once again Scots don’t have leasehold although there are factors fees.
But residents can change factors with a majority of residents in favour of change.
Most in the block are renters, typical rent on there is about £800 per month, they will likely be expected to find the money until the end of the lease and then the landlord will.
Anyone thinking it’s a luxury block with rich householders will be proven wrong
they never whinged when property prices increased
they should complain to tory MP
Is there anyway people can check on the value for money? This sort of thing seems like a huge scam and under regulated. Mate pays hundreds a month for a hallway to be vacuumed once a week.
How old are the flats. I’d pursue the flat builder
Jesus christ, 9k a year is so much fucking money. What kind of services are there that require this much? Actual rip off.
Stuff like this should be illegal, maintaining a building in good order should be the responsibility of the freeholder and should be included in a fixed (ok, if I’m being nice, inflation linked) service charge defined in the lease. It should not be possible to simply decide one day to increase it significantly.
Landlords complaining about cost of maintaining their buildings, boo hoo
Pay rent.
Pay service charge for the janitor(s).
Pay leasehold land rent.
If you’re shared equity you also have to pay mortgage AND save up for another instalment of the equity in a few years time.
Welcome to the dystopia.
Feel yourself lucky you are not in Florida witha condo 30 years old. £8K is chicken feed in comparison.
Sometimes I toy with the idea of selling my house and buying a flat but stories like this make me run for the hills
I own a leasehold flat and handle affairs with our management company. They are absolutely vile, it’s a complete scam, and the cunts feel absolutely entitled to owners cash.
I can do worse than this – my flat company is asking for £16k a year (up from £1.5k)
For that kind of money I’d expect a blowjob before and after work everyday
Needs to be massive reform on this it’s a joke. Service charges shouldn’t just be dropped on people after they’ve bought a flat, it should be clear from purchase what the rate will be with no possibility to increase above inflation. Any maintenance that will be needed should be factored into these charges on a monthly basis so that if/when they’re needed there’s a fund there to pay for it.
Leasehold certainly needs redorm and this kind of thing needs banning. But why are people still buying these flats? This scam has been known about for mamy years now.
Surely this should be a Section 28 Major Works instead of an increase to the management fee?
I’d also suggest that the leaseholders get together and do a Right To Manage.
What pension hasn’t already been sold off and undercut by the time we are even allowed access to our own money.
Oh that’s right the politicians and the people that get to make the decision as per it politicians looking out for their own interests.
Would love to know how many, if any have paid in more than they get out. Spoiler it’s zero.
Under the old price, which was already pretty damn high IMO:
60 flats x £210 = £12,600 a month = £151,200 a year
Under the new prices it goes insane!
60 flats x £733 = £43,980 a month = £527,760 a year!!!
I would be very curious to see how the funds before had been spent and how they came up with this figure to “essential maintenance of the balconies”.
I see a fuck you price. The objective is to make the tenants leave.
After 3 years in UK still can’t understand how people can accept “Leasehold”. This is one of the biggest scam I’ve seen along with Shared Ownership.
Each balcony is about £2k to fix with treated hardwood. So where is the rest of the money going?
This article is an accidental masterclass is how monumentally twisted and ridiculous housing is in the UK
>Flat owners set to be hit with a 249% increase in service charges
Insanity
>Jessica, who bought a flat there in 2007, said she was “flabbergasted” by the hike
Makes sense
>adding: “They’re asking for more than what we get rent.”
Lmaaaaooooo 🙃
It’s rentiers all the way down folks!!
So they did nothing when they clearly saw maintenance not happening, now they report it and it’s happening they care about the cost. They also didn’t seem to care enough to check they had a sinking fund when they bought or later that it was maintained.
This isn’t a leasehold problem it’s an idiot problem.
We self manage ours, we had a fund, but had to put up the fees to replenish it. The people that complained were all the ones that complained we had a fund in the first place. And when you point out if we didn’t we would have has to charge everyone 5.5k right now will say they don’t have that and we can just not do the work. And when you say that’s not an option the roof has a hole in it they go off in why things should be expected…. and when you point out we did but you didn’t want to pay earlier they storm off.