Seller Misled on Service Charges

JM799

Hi

Just wondered if anyone had any comments please.
I am in the process of buying a house, I have the contract papers but have not signed yet. You see the house is in a private close but I did not know this until I received the latest information from my solicitor. That means there are some service charges/maintenance charges each year. When I was looking at the property I did ask the seller if there were any maintenance/service charges (because the house is on an estate) but was told there was none and on the initial information pack the seller has ticked NO to the box asking if there is any service charges for the house. My solicitor seems not to be worried about this but is this illegal? I just feel a bit cheated.

Any replies would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Cannon_Fodder

Add it up x10 years and drop the price by that...

david29dpo

The seller as lied to you and you have run up a legal bill because of it. You may have a case but dont bother, do as above and add a bit.

chickmug

Just how much is involved each year?

I would start with the EA and tell him that you are annoyed about this and ask if they feel the seller would be prepared to make a reduction as you feel like pulling out. The EA will not want to loose the commission?

DVardysShadow

Nobody is concerned that the HIP contains an untruth? Are there any penalties for untruths in HIPs?

chickmug

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Nobody is concerned that the HIP contains an untruth? Are there any penalties for untruths in HIPs?

Good question and I am not 100% sure who is liable.

So my view is the cheapest you can buy and let the buyer worry about the quality of the contents.

Richard_Webster

Has your solicitor told you how much the service charge is, or merely that the legal documents provide for one to be collected? In some cases they set up some company to do maintenance etc and it doesn't do anything at all, or doesn't do anything for years, e.g. because road surface is OK. So it could be that seller has never had a demand for any money and has forgotten what was in the legal wording when he bought.

You need to talk to your solicitor to find out how much information he has. You may need to talk to neighbours and ask them about the service charge.
I know of two or three cases in my area where there were arrangements for some company to maintain open space areas and for the residents to pay, but where the company has been wound up years ago and it looks as if the Council now looks after the areas. We regularly get questions about these estates from out of area solicitors who do not know the position.

brightonman123

i would walk away - if seller LIED about s/c, and agent didnt bother checking, what else is being hidden..?

if still keen though, defunately ask for reduction in price due to misrepresentation.

DVardysShadow

chickmug wrote: »

So my view is the cheapest you can buy and let the buyer worry about the quality of the contents.

Which comprehensively undermines the purpose of the HIP.

It does not do the OP's seller any good either, if the OP pulls out, because they have just lost marketing time. I think that the OP should sue for expenses after the time they recieved the HIP. I know that some will say "there is no contract so you can't", but the HIP is supposed to weed out waste of buyers' time due to issues emerging late in a sale. A successful claim would work wonders for getting HIPs right.

Richard_Webster

We haven't been told yet if:

1. The sellers have never been charged anything and therefore genuinely didn't remember and said there were no service charges in HIP. (Criticism of HIP here would be that it expects lay people to remember this kind of legal detail from when they bought and we know a lot of people don't.) OR

2. Sellers knew perfectly well because they had been paying the charge and therefore it appears they may have deliberately lied.

Lawyers who draw up questionnaires for lay people to complete really do have to think about how they are worded. For years there has been a question in a standard questionnaire about building work along the lines of: "Has there been any building work at the property (e.g extension, loft conversion, conservatory, internal wall removal)?"

It was very common for sellers to answer "No" when there was a massive great two storey side extension. Buyers' solicitors got so used to his kind of thing that they gave up making facetious remarks about the seller's eyesight. They knew the reason would be that the sellers thought the question only applied to work they had carried out, when there was no such qualification. The form I now use has in bold "at any time"!

The PIQ in the HIP adds to the confusion here because it does only ask about work the seller has had done! So we will get buyers not reading the question and accusing the seller of lying when they truthfully answered "No" because an extension was built by their predecessors!

JM799

Just want to sat thanks for all the excellent replies. In answer to some;
1/ The charges are about 400 a yr.
2/ The seller did know because there is a receipt from the maintanence company earlier this year.
It is not like a maintenance company for a flat. The company is owned and set up and run by the residents of the estate. So there are no external companies involved, only the contractors the company employs.
My solicitor has said there in no major works upcoming or anything that needs doing. He said he could not explain the sellers actions but said everything else is OK.
I am very keen on the property and got an initially good discount so I will go ahead with the purchase, just a bit saddened with untruths that is all. I think the property has been on the market for a while and the seller wanted a sale.
However just wanted to know if there is anything seriously wrong that is only found out after the purchase would there be any comeback on the seller legally?