Need Help From Anyone Who Lives In Glasgow Tenements!

i live in a block of 8 tennement flats. All privately owned.The buildings insurance is done via a factor which is £170 pa. (total cover £1.5m) We each arrange our own contents i paid £30 pa this year after a generous special offer with post office insurance.It has worked well and not too expensive. Dealing with maintainance bills via the factors for trades well thats a different story!

anyone have an email contact address for hacking and patterson?

Really really so not impressed with them!

stobieside wrote: »

I too live in a Glasgow tenement and we are seriously considering ditching our factor and doing the work ourselves. Are there printed guidelines that we can get hold of to make sure we cover everything? Thanks!

OKay I'm a total nerd......
Nip down to Borders and get yourself "The tennament Handbook" written by some glasgow chartered surveyors and Uni staff. The best tenner you'll ever spend.

Type H & P into google. I dont want them to sue me but ther was a BBC documentary that "kind of ahem looked into them".

ONE VERY VERY important thing to rememeber is that a factor is only YOUR agent. You are responsible for the upkeep and pay them for assisting you.

Sometimes they forget that.

I'm not against them. I was in a tenement where a couple of absentee landlords refused to pay a factor. I ended up doing it all myself adn having to collect the money from them. A pain in the *ss. Sorry :money:

One scam that factors do is have a rebate system with the workmen. How it works is this. They call out the one tradesman to do all the electrical repairs but the electrician gives a discount of say 30%. Okay so far??? Well not.... This discount is for an annual/monthly bill for all properties. Not a discount for only one property. That way they are not legally entitled to pass the discount onto you. Because it is not for ONLY your work, but for the total work carried out on all properties.

Communal buildings insurace can be beneficial if you go to a large housing association. Partick Housing Assoc has a good reputation.

Also remember that becaus ea factor is YOUR agent. You dont have to put all jobs through them. You can be "semi-factored". What I mean by this is you the factor a nominal annual fee. You perhaps get them to have the close swept and have the grass cut. This is how we opperate in our new close. It is excellent. the place is very neat and tidy.

All major repairs are discussed amongst us and we arrange for competitive quotes for major works. eg close painting.

That way you have smaller bills and also have a factor to step in if there is a dispute where one neighbour refuses to agree to work being done.

Remember it is YOUR resoonsibility to repair the comunal places. If a bannister is broken and a child falls and hurts themself. You are responsible, not your factor.

All the best
Bob

mleonard79 wrote: »

Hi Edinburgh Lass,

I wish I'd know there was a programme about factors on - I would have been most interested to see that. What was said? Thanks.

Regards

Michelle

Have a look here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7174631.stm

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=4030&edition=1&ttl=20080815165722&#paginator

When we lived in a tenement a few years back, there was no factor and it was a nightmare, nobody would agree to any repairs or inprovements. the scum lowlife that lived upstairs smashed the security entrance as he'd lost his keys and wouldn't cough up for it and it never got fixed basically. We were supposed to take turns paying the bill for the close lights and nobody would do it except us (it was only about a pound a quarter!!). I could go on but I wished we'd had a factor at the time!