Four houses, one management company - we want to sack them!

Roytonian

Hello moneysavers!

Two years ago we bought a house from David Wilson, and we were told to expect the man agent fee to be £250 and if we wanted to, we could between the four houses opt out and look after the courtyard ourselves - it consists of six parking spaces and a small area of shrubs.

We today had a very poorly printed welcome pack from Solitaire Property Management that is asking us to pay £450 a year!

None of the four home owners think this is fair and would like to manage things ourselves - where do we start? Most of the information on Google is about apartments, not houses.

In our lease it simply states that we have to contribute to reasonable maintenance charges.... And that's about it!

Many thanks in advance

Darren
:mad:

G_M

Start by looking here.

The_Hornet

Do all you can to get away from Solitaire! They manage a flat of mine, one of 4 in a block, and their fees are extortionate for what they do. Approx twice what you have been quoted!!!

glottalstop

You will need to look at your transfer of title document. When David Wilson constructed a 3-way lease giving rights to a management company you would have be a counter-signing party on that document.

The Transfer will contain the details of the opt out clause, which will say that if most/all of you want to change, you can vote to appoint a replacement which Solitaire must hand over to asap. It may specify that 3 or 5 years needs to have passed.

Solitaire (Peverel Group) are re-branding as OM Property Management. They have a quite dreadful reputation. They will not hurry, may impose their own voting procedure, and will charge you legal and administrative charges for the handover.

Yes, charges should only be £250-300. They may be anticipating some expenditure, trying to build a reserve, or simply need to charge more for such a small estate to be economically worthwhile to them.

Because you are such a small development you might struggle to get much interest from a property management company to take over. Perhaps a small local RICS surveyor or solicitor or accountant may be able to help, or you might need to form a collective management company and do it yourself.

The ultimate way forward is to buy the freehold (and leasehold if there is one) of the common area, and to share/enfranchise it between the properties. Start with the Land Registry and check the freehold / leasehold title. Then as above take advice from LEASE or a solicitor.

Richard_Webster

Buyers need to refuse to buy leasehold houses from developers. Then they wouldn't have as many hassles later.

Esio_Trot_2

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Buyers need to refuse to buy leasehold houses from developers. Then they wouldn't have as many hassles later.

Whilst I fully agree, this does not help the OP who unwittingly has found themselves in the clutches of this parasite company.

Roytonian wrote: »

We today had a very poorly printed welcome pack from Solitaire Property Management that is asking us to pay £450 a year!

...

In our lease it simply states that we have to contribute to reasonable maintenance charges.... And that's about it!

There will be a way to get away from Peverel/Solitaire or what other associated company they use as part of their smoke and mirrors method of management.

It will be easier for you to get away from them as there are only four properties - some developments have over 100. One thing is for certain, you will have a bit of a learning curve. The best starting point is to download information from lease-advice.org (you'll need to cut and paste the link and add www at the start, as I haven't done enough posts to insert a link) and study this. Once you have a feel for things, start looking at some of the decisions of the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (search on Peverel/solitaire) where disgruntled leaseholders have turned. I have never yet found a LVT decision that has gone against the leaseholders.

Best of luck with this.