What???? Housing Association want money for providing info to our buyer!

frafferty

But RacyRed - why do we have to pay for it? Why not the buyer?

RacyRed

frafferty wrote: »

But RacyRed - why do we have to pay for it? Why not the buyer?

Dunno exactly, maybe because it is us, as sellers, they have the control over? A buyer can walk away if confronted with this additional cost, but if we want to sell, we have to pay - it appears to be a fixed charge.

If it is any consolation you send the documents to YOUR solicitor, so if your buyer pulls out you don't have to get another one for the next buyer to come along.

vet8

This appears to be another rip off charge on sellers. Should not the wonderful HIPs cover this sort of thing? I know I have filled in all the HIP forms and now my solicitor has sent me a load of forms asking the same questions so I am paying for the same info. twice.

It seems to be a further tax on property owners.

Theogirl_2

It is irritating as you are not HA. However when you sell a leasehold (I know this isn't) the seller usually coughs up an admin fee to the management company definitely not the buyer in my experience.

Looks it's really annoying, see if you can cut a deal with the HA, otherwise I would just pay and move on, you will have to pay it at some point by the looks of things.

daveyjp

"We have nothing to do with the HA apart from a maintenance charge of £5 per month which we pay towards the landscaping of the shared areas in our road."

So you do have something to do with your HA then - this is important. If I were buying the property I'd want to know what I am buying into. Service charges are strange beasts - it's only £5 at the moment, but when a major job needs doing it could turn into £10,000 per property.

The buyer has probably sent an enquiries before contract form to the seller's solicitor and as there is a service charge payable to a third party there will be answers your solicitor will need to provide. The solicitor is duty bound to get answers to these queries.

Here's a completed one:

http://www.pugh-auctions.com/auctions/_legals/2010-02-25/002/enquiries%20before%20contract.pdf

But they can be much longer and can take a long time to complete, hence the charge.

frafferty

daveyjp wrote: »

So you do have something to do with your HA then - this is important. If I were buying the property I'd want to know what I am buying into. Service charges are strange beasts - it's only £5 at the moment, but when a major job needs doing it could turn into £10,000 per property.

The leasholders pay for major works - the freeholders only pay towards the landscaping. So if major works were to be done then it would be down to the leasholders to cough up. This was explained on our SPIF and also is detailed in our covenants, copies of which are in the HIP. So as you can see I am a bit :mad: at having to cough up to provide the same information that has been provided elsewhere! I can't see how trimming a couple of hedges is going to cost an awful lot more than £1140 per year (which is what the current cost is and is divided between the 19 houses in the road) and the cost has actually been going down every year - so much so that our account is actually in quite a bit of credit at the moment.

Will be phoning the solicitor in the morning to discuss making the payment on the provision that WE get to have the documents to provide to other purchasers should this sale fall through. And also to tell them to give our buyers and ultimatum that they must be ready to exchange in 7 days or we will put the house back on the market. They have had long enough to do all of this. The rest of the chain has been ready to exchange for 2+ weeks now.

Fire_Fox

frafferty wrote: »

But RacyRed - why do we have to pay for it? Why not the buyer?

Will be phoning the solicitor in the morning to discuss making the payment on the provision that WE get to have the documents to provide to other purchasers should this sale fall through. And also to tell them to give our buyers and ultimatum that they must be ready to exchange in 7 days or we will put the house back on the market. They have had long enough to do all of this. The rest of the chain has been ready to exchange for 2+ weeks now.

You have to pay for this information because YOU are the ones with a legal relationship with the housing association, your buyers cannot ask for information about your account due to data protection. Somewhere in your deeds there will be a clause which allows the HA to charge you an admin fee in certain circumstances, the buyers are not party to that contract. If you are unhappy with the magnitude of the charge write to your HA asking for a full breakdown.

The documents will come to you and belong to you, the buyer's solicitor asks the vendor's solicitor who asks the HA, then the HA passes the info to the vendor's solicitor who passes it to the buyer's solicitor. It works the same in leasehold as it does in freehold with a service charge. These queries may take weeks to come through so I would suggest you chase the HA regularly - that is the benefit of having paid for the information.

frafferty

Thanks Fire Fox. From what our solicitor has said today, the HA were ready to release the docs providing that we put a cheque in the post today. So hopefully we won't have to wait too long to get them. Will check that with the sols in the morning though.

I tried to get the HA to break down the cost today for me but just kept getting "It's a standard charge" and "We are priced competitively compared to other associations". Losers.

Fire_Fox

I would write and ask for a breakdown. IIRC our management company (leasehold) legally has to provide breakdown if asked as admin charges - like service charges - must be "reasonable" and "reasonably incurred". Given that your HA deals with leasehold properties too, they ought to be able to justify the charge.

Richard_Webster

It is standard that sellers have to pay for information of this nature.

Whether the fee is reasonable is another matter but getting it changed will be a major wind up because the HA will probably have to have a committee meeting about it! As I said in my previous post they will have a standard charge for answering queries and they will probably charge the same for providing much more information in connection with the sale of a flat.

When I am acting for a buyer of a flat who asks me how long it will take, I usually add in a week or two for the time it takes for the seller's solicitor to persuade his client to pay the managing agent's fee - because an adverse reaction by sellers is quite common - particularly when it it is around £300 or more!