Maintenance charges for previous tennant

System

Thanks for your posts again.

Today I received an email from the lady at the HA.

Hi Joe

I received an email from <previous owner>, and I have answered him today.

Apologies for the delay but I only work Tues and Wed only, so today is my pick up day!

As you know we have now waited 15 months for this to be sorted out. <HA> are always happy to advise on monies at the time of sales, but we can only leave with the vendor/purchaser, and sols, to sort final monies out.

Secondly we can only send the invoice out to the current owner, and leave him to sort the account out with the vendor, or sols. etc.

December 07 we spoke with you with regards to this account, and you said that you would speak with <previous owner> to arrange payment. Since then we have been waiting. Which is why we have had to chase this up.

Hope this helps, and look forward to receiving this asap.

I replied as follows:

Hi <HA person>, thanks for responding!

I understand your frustration in the delay, in December 2007 I assumed it was all sorted out and couldn’t believe my eyes when another bill appeared last week!

Is <previous owner> chasing his solicitors and has he agreed to pay? My solicitor seems to be taking a long time to dig out my file, I shall chase them today.

Is there anything you need me to do right now? I’m happy to help sort this out but the people I spoke to are very quick to get me off the phone again and I’m not sure what to do.

Thanks,

Promising though that the old owner has also been in touch, I'm a lot calmer today

System

Another email received, she is dealing with the ex-owner now and they are sorting it out between them, I'm off the hook for the forseeable, phew!

zebedy

Glad you've got this sorted.
I had a similar but not nearly so stressful situation.
When I bought my leasehold flat, after a few months i discovered the previous owner still owed about 6 months worth of maintenance charge. I got in touch with my solicitor who wrote to the previous owner and to the maintenance charge people and it got sorted quickly. Solicitor didn't charge me anything for the letters and I never heard another peep about it so previous owner probably paid up.

One of the "joys" of leasehold properties I'm afraid

System

Heh, yeah I guess. It didn't even cross my mind during the purchase of the flat but I'm glad the solicitor's were on the ball and had it all sorted.