Maintanence Charge

IHateDida

G_M wrote: »

This does note make sense. If you were a shareholder then there was a (probobly Ltd) company that 'you' collectively owned and which ran the estate. The 'Management Company' collecting the annual charges and arranging the contractors worked for.... you!

You (colectively as the shareholders of the owning company) could fire the management company, or instruct them to use different contractors etc. They were simply contracted by the owning company in which you had a share to do the day-to-day legwork and then account for it at the end of the year.

The trouble with these set-ups is that often the residents, such as you, who actually own the shares, have very poor understanding of how this works, so just leave the professional management company they've employed to get on with it. This suits the management company, as they can charge whatever fee they feel like, instruct contractors who are 'related' businesses or provide kickbacks (not overt obviously!), or otherwise increase their profits, safe in the knowledge that these amateur 'shareholders' will never really question what they do!

It turned out that we had some sort of shareholding where we couldn't make the decisions -only *try* and influence them - believe me, there were more clued up people on the committee who tried and failed to do things about this - legal advice was sought but due to the nature of the shares - and the fact that the seller of the homes (annington homes - who sell ex-MOD houses) - had more shares and were basically "sharing the bed" with the management company. They kept saying that one day we would be left to manage our own site....but in the 4 years that we lived there, they kept their shareholding, and hence power within the decision making process - and there was very little that the residents could do.

Call it naive that we entered into an agreement originally like this with Annington, the management company...I don't know - but thats how buying the majority of ex-MOD homes work - and we either accepted it or didn't buy.

IHateDida

xycom1 wrote: »

To clarify, the site on which the homes were built was owned by Xxx Homes. As a brownfield site, they got a massive incentive from the local authority to develop the site, and part of the site was transferred to another building company (from whom we bought our house). Xxx Property Management (same company as the site owning builders) maintain the whole development and own the freehold of the leasehold properties.

At some point we were promised a 'public meeting' (which never materialised) and I guess if we so desired, we could kick the management company out if there was enough agreement and willing to found a co-operative management company.

That's not really the issue though - I'm happy with the job that they're doing, I'm just concerned about the solvency of the company and the protection that our money would have?

I think the only way you have of ensuring that your money is safe is as a group of residents, put pressure on the management company to transfer the money to an external financial institution. But it does take effort in organising people to do this - how about asking the management company to arrange a public meeting where you can express your concerns. Our management company was persuaded to do this - and quite a few people turned up and raised concerns. It also helps to have someone take minutes of what was said/promised incase they do end up with financial problems.