£240 for Management Company Sale Pack?

clairey22

Hello everyone,

I am currently selling my house (first time i've done this!). We have received a letter from our solicitor asking for £240. This is to pay the Management Company for them to provide a pack which contains things like our statement of accounts, articles of association etc.

In the letter my solicitor described the charge as extortionate!

I'm a bit annoyed at the management company as they have obviously replied to my solicitor with a standard letter stating the yearly maintenance charges (£250) need to be paid in full. Which they are!!

Anyway, my questions are:

Can I just request this info from the management company myself? It looks like the sort of thing they should be providing to me anyway!

Is £240 a reasonable charge for this information? Should I just pay this and get on with it?

Thanks in advance
Claire

Niowrtt

I had to pay £170 for a 1 bed flat. £240 isn't too far out. My solicitor also described it as unnecessary and extortionate.

If your buyer wants it, then you'll have to provide it at your cost.

I got a copy to see what I'd paid for, and it was a dozen pages repeating the same information that I'd photocopied from the letters the management company had sent me over the years. Literally the same stuff - the break down of amounts spent on maintenance. But the buyer wasn't happy to just have the information from me and wanted the pack too.

It is a rip off - someone is getting £235/hour to do this and £5 going towards paying for a photocopier, paper and a stamp. However you are stuck. It's a cost of owning and selling a leasehold property.

clairey22

Niowrtt wrote: »

However you are stuck. It's a cost of owning and selling a leasehold property.

Thanks Niowrtt...one thing, I am in a freehold house not leasehold (but its on a new build estate and I do have to pay the management company an annual maintenance fee). I don't suppose that makes any difference?

Thanks
Claire

Niowrtt

That's out of my experience, but I'd have thought a freehold wouldn't "need" to pay a maintenance company anything, you could do your own maintenance if you wished.

chris_m

Niowrtt wrote: »

That's out of my experience, but I'd have thought a freehold wouldn't "need" to pay a maintenance company anything, you could do your own maintenance if you wished.

Could be that the developer wants the estate to look as they intended, so they arrange communal area gardening, etc. That would be charged to all owners of the properties, whether leasehold or freehold.

There could also be an element of leasehold with respect to the land on which a house sits, even though the house itself is freehold.

bifold

chris_m wrote: »

Could be that the developer wants the estate to look as they intended, so they arrange communal area gardening, etc. That would be charged to all owners of the properties, whether leasehold or freehold.

There could also be an element of leasehold with respect to the land on which a house sits, even though the house itself is freehold.

There could be a play area and most of the charge is spent on insurance which is the case in one of my freeholds:mad:

clairey22

chris_m wrote: »

Could be that the developer wants the estate to look as they intended, so they arrange communal area gardening, etc. That would be charged to all owners of the properties, whether leasehold or freehold.

There could also be an element of leasehold with respect to the land on which a house sits, even though the house itself is freehold.

Yes, Chris_M this is the case, we pay £250 a year for maintenance, for things like the communal gardens, play area and electric gates etc.

I have emailed my solicitor to see if the buyer's solicitor explicitly has asked for the whole pack or if there is just one or two documents that I may have or be able to get hold them myself.

PompeyPete

Niowrtt wrote: »

That's out of my experience, but I'd have thought a freehold wouldn't "need" to pay a maintenance company anything, you could do your own maintenance if you wished.

We're on a conservation area, and our property is freehold.
We pay maintenance/communal charges, and also have a whole raft of covenants to abide by.
We were supposed to be selling recently, and had to pay £150 + VAT for a Pre-Sales pack.
Our solicitor told us it's a rip-off, but unavoidable.
Our sale fell through at the last minute.