Ground Rent - what does it cover?

chiefdave

Hoping for some clarification on ground rent and the costs we should be paying. First a bit of background, my girlfriend owns her own flat (leasehold), when the flat was bought there was a delay as her solicitor insisited the lease be changed as there was nothing to stop the ground rent being put up to any figure the owner could come up with.
Now she's had a bill from an agent acting on behalf of the landlord and they're charging for the following:

Ground rent (as laid out in the lease, no problem with that)
Annual agents management fee (surely if the owner decides to use an agent it's up to them to pay them?)
Insurance
Cleaning / Communal Electric / Repairs

Now with the cleaning and repairs we don't get any say in what's being done or notified of what has been done, i'm obvioulsy going to get her to request reciepts for these things to make sure the work has been done, there's also an issue in that i believe the agent has a handyman they employ who does most of the work and the work is not to a very high standard (tends to patch things up rather than actually repair them).
The bill (which covers from March when we moved in) is nearly £900 which seems pretty high, any info anyone can offer would be helpful!

cattie

It is perfectly normal & usual for the leaseholder to have to pay towards the managing agents fees so there is nothing amiss there & no way of getting out of it.

A charge for upkeep of communal areas is also usual. It's not normal for leaseholders to be consulted about this. The only time the freeholder has to consult with the leaseholders is when major works/decoration to the building needs doing, resulting in the leaseholders getting billed for the works.

If you feel the cleaning is not up to standard then you can complain to the managing agents.

The buildings insurance probably accounts for a considerable part of the annual service charge.

You don't say how long a period the bill of £900 covers & whether the flat is in a block or converted house. My last leasehold property had service charges of around £950 per year & every 2 years while I lived there we received bills in the region of £2000 per flat for outside decorations.

chiefdave

the bill covers around 6 months. there's 4 flats (above shops) in the block, it was converted from whatever it was before (i'm guessing 2 bigger flats) around 3 years ago. as for the communal areas there's only a hallway! What confuses me is why our solicitor made such a fuss about getting the clause about ground rent in the lease changed to prevent increases when it seems they can just add it else where, what's to stop them hiking up the management fee? as it is they're taking the money and doing pretty much nothing, you can never get anyone on the phone, no one returns calls, indeed when my girlfriend did manage to get through to someone the other day to ask for clarification of what the bill covered she was hung up on and when she immediatly dialed back they'd put the answer phone on!!!

EdInvestor

Plenty of information here on freehold/leasehold rules and what you can do about bad managing agents:

https://www.lease-advice.org.uk

chiefdave

EdInvestor wrote:

Plenty of information here on freehold/leasehold rules and what you can do about bad managing agents:

https://www.lease-advice.org.uk

excellent site, it does seem the things they are charging for are right tho the management fee does seem very high esp considering they don't do anything! The question now would be that given that we were told (in writing) that the only costs were ground rent and split of maintenance what comeback do we now have with the other charges now being added (ie: insurance), not that i don't want to pay what we should be paying just that having been led to believe we'd be look at around £100 a year to find out it's likely to be approaching £2000 a year and they want £900 in one go now it's a bit unexpected and like most people (especially ones that have just moved into and furnished a new place) not the sort of money we have to hand.