Cyclical Decorations will kill all my saving efforts

Tarostar

As a leasholder with a 50% stake in a shared ownership I've just been told by letter from the landlord (aka housing trust) that I could be looking at ~£1500 for the five year cyclical decoration program. Apparently this is something they need to do by law (or so I was told on the phone). What they will do is basically check all the windows and the door and paint them as well as look at gutters, etc. This has been estimated at around £12 000 by 4 different contractors (£1000 of which is a management fee) and part of the expense is because they need to put up scaffolding to do the work. I've only lived at the property for year-and-a-half and pay ~£100 in service charges per month (in addition to rent and mortgage), but apparently the sinking fund is only ~£3000 which is why the six families living in this house need to pay the £1500 each.

Needless to say this is a lot of money and although it is good that they care for the building it is not like there are any major repairs that needs to be done. Is this cost reasonable? Can we not just paint the windows ourselves, I'm sure it would work out a lot cheaper! Seriously anyone know what my rights and options are in this situation? I don't exactly have £1500 spare lying around and adding it as a monthly cost will hurt.

PS! Talking to a friend he pays £30 service charge and the painting of his windows was apparently covered by this! Feels like a rip-off.

Thanks for reading.

chez22

That sounds like a rip off to me. I have lived on a shared ownership estate for 14 years and the housing association here does not have anything to do with decoration of properties. Any painting is done by tenants/owners. I bought my house outright 5 years ago, but prior to that I paid rent which included a service charge of around £15 a month. This was for buildings insurance and upkeep of communal areas.

sooz

What does it say in your lease?
It may well state that exterior maintenance is to be done every 5 years.
I guess you are in a flat, not a house. In which case it is not practical for each owner to paint their own exterior window frames. How many floors are there?
If you all owned 100% of your own leases, you would be entitled to get your own alternative quotes for these works. Not sure if this is applicable to shared ownership leases.

Squish_21

I am interested in the responses to your query as i am in a similar siuation in that i am facing having to pay £1k next year for the walls to be painted, i'd rather do it myself!!!!!!!

Tarostar

Hi thanks for the responses.

The lease states that the housing association (aka landlord) is responsible for the doors, windows and building as well as communal areas (edit: but it says that the landlord can pass such costs to the tenants). It's a three floors tall building with 6 flats and it's in reasonably good repair (i.e. no peeling paint on the windows or anything like that).

Having found the list of things they plan to do much of the reason for the high sum is that they are hireing scaffolding and a cherry picker for 4 weeks to reach all the windows so they can clean them with chemical cleaner, rub them down to prepare for paint and then paint them again in three layers. This seems like overkill, but apparently this is a health and safety issue so they have to hire the scaffolding. They also quote £700 for cleaning paint marks from the brickwork before and after the repainting of the windows. £150 to leave all electrical fittings in the hallway in working order (they are currently all in working order!). £6.50/m2 for carpet cleaning in the hallway (the hallway is cleaned every week by cleaners!).

They can't tell me why the sinking fund is "only" £3000 when I pay £100 a month and the 5 year redecoration costs £15 000. All they can do is offer to pay the ~£1500 cost in installments.

I feel a bit helpless as this could all be perfectly reasonable as I'm no expert at building maintenance. Who might be able to help me figure that out? Does it sound reasonable to put up scaffolding all around the house every 5 years to scrub down and repaint all the windows? Are these reasonable costs and actually cheap quotes like they claim or are they just exploiting the tenants to pay over the top rates for non-essential work?

sooz

scaffolding is essential. Cherry picker as well? Can't they just use scaffolding? If this must be done every 5 years, can the management co. buy a scaffold platform, & store it for this purpose somewhere onsite?

removing old paint off brickwork I can understand. It looks awful. Why are they using this contractor if before he starts work he is quoting to remove the excess paint he leaves on the brickwork. Do a better job, include this service in the price of the quoted job, or use a contractor who can paint in straight lines!

carpet cleaning is different to just hoovering, but again this cost seems high. Can you get other quotes? In a normal leasehold you could.

Try checking with LEASE. https://www.lease-advice.org

sooz

Tarostar wrote: »

They can't tell me why the sinking fund is "only" £3000 when I pay £100 a month and the 5 year redecoration costs £15 000. All they can do is offer to pay the ~£1500 cost in installments.

Your service charges are £100 per month. If you all pay the same that's £7200 per year.
This is not just for the sinking fund.
This will include buildings insurance. Do you have a copy of the policy?
It wll include the cost of the weekly hallway clean.
It will include the cost of someone changing lightbulbs, communal electricity bill for the hall, & mowing grass if there is any outside etc.
A large part of it will also be the fee that the management company charge for organising this, as well as their percentage charge for major works (£1000 of your large redecorating bill).
Depending on how they do their accounts, a part of this £100 per month may be allocated to the sinking fund, or anything left over may be thrown into the pot.
Have you ever been sent a copy of the accounts. You have the right to see these, & to see what your monthly service charge is being spent on.

sooz

I've had a quick look at the lease website for you. There are some LVT determinations that refer to shared ownership properties. I am not certain, as I don't deal with shared ownership properites, so you may be better off calling LEASE for advice. The website doesn't clearly refer to shared ownership properties.


Was the decorating bill sent to you as a section 20 notice? If so, did it include a summary of your rights & obligations?
Look here http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/documents/document.asp?item=19

Tarostar

sooz wrote: »

Have you ever been sent a copy of the accounts. You have the right to see these, & to see what your monthly service charge is being spent on.

Yes they send us a yearly statement. It lists a lot of costs like cleaners, gardeners (some bushes and a tiny garden) and administration fee (always one of those), but I never paid much attention how much is left for the sinking fund. I'll have to look into that, so thanks for drawing my attention to it.

I'm writing a formal letter to point out the things I think are not needed (like both a cherry picker AND scaffolding) and internal chemical cleaning of the windows (I'll clean my windows on the inside myself thank you very much)!!!

As I said before I might have no choice but to pay and be happy the building is being cared for, but if there is anything I have learned from Martin's moneysaving advice it is that you need to question everything. That's how you get money back, how you avoid paying more than you should and get the best deals. It also helps me to vent some of my frustration for a sudden big unexpected bill. Once I'm happy with the letter I'll post it here for people to criticize, scrutinize and use as inspiration for their own purposes.

sooz

speak to LEASE.
You may well be entitled, as leaseholders, to each provide your own quotes for all of the major works. This could save you a huge amount of money.

Always deal with your managing agent in writing, & keep a copy. Most are awful

Tarostar

sooz wrote: »

Was the decorating bill sent to you as a section 20 notice? If so, did it include a summary of your rights & obligations?
Look here http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/documents/document.asp?item=19

You are good, I'm glad I posted here. Thanks! Just wish I'd done so last year.

They did indeed send this as a Section 20 notice of intention in June 2008. They included a list of the intended works and a form with a box for Nominated Contractor and for comments. At the time I had lived in the building for just over six months and assumed that most of the cost would be covered by the sinking fund or that the other tenants would speak up if something was amiss. I realise now that this was a mistake and I should have done my research then.

They again sent a section 20 notice now, but it does not contain any box for nominating a different contractor, just for comments. I guess I need to speak with LEASE, but I have a sinking feeling that the ship has sailed.