Can anyone advise on this horrible unfair bill?

frivolous_fay

Hope this is the right forum

I live in a leasehold flat. Our service company have obtained quotes for extensive roof maintenance and internal decoration of the communal areas (long, long overdue).

To our shock, each flat (22 in all) has been hit with a bill of around £1000, less individual contributions made to the 'reserve fund' account, which works out at around £840 per flat. Pretty harsh!

Here are the things that are really bugging me, ignoring for the moment from the vague and frankly discourteous way the management company have dealt with this.

- There is around £9,000 sloshing around in the 'service charge' account. None of this is being contributed towards the bill. This is money that residents have paid in... so how the hell can the company refuse to use at least some of it?
- If there is that much excess money sloshing around in the service account, why are we paying £75 a quarter into it? We must be overpaying by quite a bit! Can we appeal the amount we pay?
- The work will be staggered: roof first, redecoration later, yet we are being billed for the lot. Can we ask that the bill is broken up?

I'm angry, and worried. This bill isn't easily manageable for us, and to add insult to injury, it comes on the heels of a £355 bill we paid when a friend was towed from our own private parking space and the management company refused to intervene.

Can anyone suggest anything that may help us? We have until 25th June to pay.

jimmmyc

I had a similar problem with a flat I owned a while ago, we quickly formed a residents commitee, got the managing agent to get other quotes and use some of the reserve fund. We actually got the work costs reduced by half!
After investigation it seemed the original company was a little bit too closely linked to the management company, so do some research and kick up a fuss.
If you all refuse to pay they have to listen to you.

Astaroth

It is obviously impossible for anyone to comment on if £22k is reasonable for what could be a new roof on a building and complete internal decorations as we dont know the scale of the job involved - for example is the internal bit just repainting or are we talking about also replacing all the flooring?

The best bet would be collectively ask for copies of the estimates and for the agents to get 3 quotes for the work.

The reserve is there for emergencies and ultimately you get the question of would you prefer for it to be spent now but if the roof blew off in a storm that you all had to fork out another £500 each in cleared funds before the management company even started to look for people to carryout the emergency repairs.

Think yourself lucky, the charges for our development is £450 a quarter for flats or £250 a quarter for houses.

PJD

jimmmyc wrote:

After investigation it seemed the original company was a little bit too closely linked to the management company..

Oh, what a surprise.

Charge residents the earth, get some jobsworth to do the work for bugg_r all, pocket the rest of the cash, lovely jubberly.

Dead_Eye_Jones

yeah it can be very much worse. There was that sotry on the beeb a while back about a council owned block that needed major building work, the council landed each flat with a £40k bill! This put some people in the position of being unable to sell their flat and unable to pay. What could they do about it? Nothing. These people were facing eviction.

tbh you have it easy! Having rented some flats, id never buy one. Most new build flats in my area sell at the same price I just bought my 3 bed semi! Crazy! Fools and their money...

kit

Firstly check your lease.... sometime they will say that the management company needs to consult all involved before spending over a certain amount.

Secondly... have a meeting with all leaseholders... as a group ask why the £9000 is not being used and try to negociate on this. Sinking funds are there to cover things like this!

Thirdly - ask to see quotes from 3 different companies. They should get at least 3 quotes before deciding on who to go with.


Remember - even tho they own the freehold, they still have to work WITH you to get this sort of thing resolved.


Edit - they should give you more notice to pay too...... they cant expect you to pay upfront like that.... again, thats why you have a sinking fund.

frivolous_fay

Roof quote: £10,230 to strip out paving slabs on flat roof and renew felt.
Internal: £8,020: redecorate staircases, halls, corridors. Repair nosings and tiles on stairs. Fix faulty fire escape.

Bung on an extra 15% which we're paying a surveyor to supervise the work - and oh gosh, that surveyor just happen to be the PREVIOUS management company who looked after this block - and you have a total of £24,660.24.

The management co. has supplied details of the various companies and quotes they received from them. What infuriates me is the way they have gone about trying to get the money off us.

1. They wrote to us early in the year to tell us they were getting quotes, and invited us to respond. Having no clue what the process was, I did write - I actually suggested several things that needed fixing - and importantly, asked if we should be expecting a bill. They couldn't be ar$ed to reply.
2. They sent the bill. 'No responses were received from residents' on the top. Bloody nerve!
3. They deducted the reserve fund contributions from each flat's bill. In our case the figure was slightly low - when I commented on this, this was the reply: 'You are talking about an adjustment of what appears to be 64p. [she's wrong - it's more like £1.50:)](this difference is as a result of rounding)'

Isn't it a bit mean-spirited to round down (at the resident's expense) when you're billing them for £832.92?

I've emailed her back with the points I feel she has failed to address in her email to me today, and I await with excitement her reply, which will probably take a further week and a half to arrive. My boyfriend's gripe is that the businesses on the bottom two floors of the block will not be contributing towards the bill. He thinks it's unfair that they aren't expected to help pay for the roof that is over all our heads.

Thanks for the feedback so far. By the way, we're not talking a luxury apartment here... I'm talking a flat in a grotty block in Luton that we only paid £51k for...