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Any advice on ridiculous invoice amount from management company (HA)?
ellersb
Posts: 80 Forumite
We’ve nearly completed on our sale of our (owned by housing partnership) maisonette. Now, there’s work that needs to be paid for which is outstanding, which we’re totally fine with covering as we wouldn’t dream of passing this bill onto our buyers.
The property is ex-council so the LL (I’ll call them landlord for simplicity) has leaseholders and tenants. The tenants don’t pay towards any major works or maintenance work and it appears that the contractors couldn’t care less how much they charge as, as far as they’re concerned, it’s council money paying their bill.
The work was this:
Replace water tanks and pipework so we don’t get legionellas disease or something equally stupid.
We live in a block of 8, and from memory there are 3 or 4 water tanks in the loft (loft is padlocked so can’t see). The estimate for OUR portion of this work is £1500.
Googling water tanks, they cost about £400 for a good one.
The work was carried out in less than one day after we received just one notice (about 18 months ago) that this was going to go ahead at some point and this is how much the cheapest quote was.
There are only 3 leaseholders in our block of 8, and all work is (apparently) split between the 8 (the LL picks up the council tenant costs I guess), so this is saying that to replace 3-4 water tanks cost £12,000.
Someone please tell me that I’m not going mad and that this is way too much?! Also, we’re not paying it until we’re allowed to inspect the work during hours which are convenient to us. They’ll get back to me in 10 days as this might be a health and safety issue (there’s no ladder for the loft).
Any advice on what else I can do in the meantime? Chances are we’ll be battling this after we’ve left the property anyway.
The property is ex-council so the LL (I’ll call them landlord for simplicity) has leaseholders and tenants. The tenants don’t pay towards any major works or maintenance work and it appears that the contractors couldn’t care less how much they charge as, as far as they’re concerned, it’s council money paying their bill.
The work was this:
Replace water tanks and pipework so we don’t get legionellas disease or something equally stupid.
We live in a block of 8, and from memory there are 3 or 4 water tanks in the loft (loft is padlocked so can’t see). The estimate for OUR portion of this work is £1500.
Googling water tanks, they cost about £400 for a good one.
The work was carried out in less than one day after we received just one notice (about 18 months ago) that this was going to go ahead at some point and this is how much the cheapest quote was.
There are only 3 leaseholders in our block of 8, and all work is (apparently) split between the 8 (the LL picks up the council tenant costs I guess), so this is saying that to replace 3-4 water tanks cost £12,000.
Someone please tell me that I’m not going mad and that this is way too much?! Also, we’re not paying it until we’re allowed to inspect the work during hours which are convenient to us. They’ll get back to me in 10 days as this might be a health and safety issue (there’s no ladder for the loft).
Any advice on what else I can do in the meantime? Chances are we’ll be battling this after we’ve left the property anyway.
DFW challenge Debt-free by Dec 2016
Oct 2015 debt:
MBNA £1300
Lloyds £1800
Virgin £4400
Oct 2015 debt:
MBNA £1300
Lloyds £1800
Virgin £4400
0
Comments
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You need to familiarise yourself with the law as it relates to service charges, and your rights to further information and/ or to challenge costs:
http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/documents/document.asp?item=14
You also need to familiarise yourself with a copy of your long lease as this will lay down what is and is not chargeable as a matter of course.Declutterbug-in-progress.⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️⭐️0
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