Advice needed with Housing Authority Bill

Anniek1969

Hi all,

This is a long story (sorry) but I hope that some of you wise people out there might be able to help with this.

I live in a maisonette which i've lived in since I was 4, me and DH bought it from the LA 15 yrs ago. Until now we've pretty much only had small repair bills from them, that was until they came up with the wonderful idea of putting cladding and new roofs on the buildings.

We had an initial meeting with them last year and although all the owners are opposed to the cladding we know that the roof does need attention and are in agreement with them on that. The cladding is another issue as it's merely to make the buildings look better and serves no other purpose. They told us that it would cost around £600,000.00 per building and with us paying 1/70, but we would all get an initial 50% discount and other discounts would be means tested.

As there are only around 20 owners the LA has the major say in what happens and they have decided that it's going ahead.

We just received our initial bill in yesterday and it says the cost is now over £900,000.00 and our share will be £13,771.00:eek: with a 50% discount this would bring it down to £6885.50:eek: We should get a further discount as we get WFTC. Although the bill is much more than we thought it would be that's not the main problem, the problem is that they have told us that payment must be made in full within 12 months of completion of the work.:eek:

The work will take around 12 months to complete so in effect we actuall have 24 months to try and get the money together but even at that it's still going to be very hard to find that extra money as if we don't get any more discount we will have to save £290 per month for 24 months to pay this.

This is way beyond our means as we currently only have around £150 disposible income which we pay to our creditors so I have no idea where i'm going to be able to find any more to pay the council.

The way I see it I have 2 options, 1. tell my creditors "sorry can't pay you for the next couple of years as we've got to pay the council for work they carried out that we didn't want or 2. let them take me to court and have the court award what they think we can afford and have another CCJ against me just when most of my bad credit is falling off my file.

Any help or advice is really appreciated as I just don't know what to do as I don't think we have any way of stopping the work going ahead.

Sorry told you it was long.:rotfl:

in_over_my_head_2

That's shocking!! I think you should speak to your local counsellor or MP, preferably with the other owners. That's just a ridiculous amount for anyone to have to pay for non-essential maintenance.

Someone else might have better advice, but I'm outraged for you!!

Anniek1969

Thanks, don't know if anyone has thought about going to our mp but from past experience she's not very good but anything's worth a try I suppose.

The thing is they are in the process of pulling down all the houses in our area that have flat roofs and ours are the only ones left, there has been talk for the past 6/7 years about them pulling these down but now they want to spend millions to make them look better. They pulled down the houses facing us (old tenements) and sold the land which has now just had building work started on it so I think the company that bought the land might have made an agreement with them to tidy our houses up otherwise I don't see them getting sold for the price they want.

Think they are being really unfair asking us to repay it so quickly.

plumduff-2

They told us that it would cost around £600,000.00 per building

We just received our initial bill in yesterday and it says the cost is now over £900,000.00

So the LA are saying that to clad and re-roof one property is costing just under one million per property..?

Dont know about the cladding, but to re-roof must only cost between £5-10K... bloody expensive cladding round your way...

Wonder if you could get a quote yourself...?

I think you need to speak to your MP about this, it certainly looks like a rip off...

Anniek1969

The reason it costs so much as its a maisonette and there are 70 houses in it but I still think it's pretty expensive, especially as the biggest bill is for the cladding which is only cosmetic.

silvercar

There are other options you could consider (not saying that they are suitable, just worth considering).

You could sell and buy something else. You must have some equity in the property if you sold. The price you get would reflect the work needed but would still leave you with enough money for a deposit on a new place. Or you could rent and use the interest on the equity released by the sale to help pay the rent [consider the effect on your benefit of this option].

Do you have a mortgage? you could consult your mortgage company about adding this cost to the mortgage.

Anniek1969

Thanks silvercar

we do have about £40,000.00 equity but selling up to buy somewhere else isn't really an option as we live in the city the prices are really outwith our budget. We were lucky to buy this from the LA and as i'd lived here since I was 4 we got quite a large reduction, so even with a £40,000 deposit we'd still have to try and get a mortgage for about £70/£80k which we couldn't really afford, we only have a small mortgage which is £145 pm at the moment.

Same with selling up to rent, the rents in the city start from around £300 pm, we've got 3 kids too and I wouldn't want to move them from the area until they've finished school.

Looks like the best option would be to ask my mortgage company about adding it to the mortgage but this p****s me off as it means that we end up paying interest on it. If only they weren't so unreasonable about the time they are giving us to pay.

crawley_girl

The same thing happened to me with my flat.

The LA wrote and said that the windows in the 9 flats which make up my block, need replacing, as well as the communal areas and stairwells. They said fascias and something else would need replacing as well. Us, the owners, had no say what so ever. Our final bill came in at apprx £5K but were given the option to spread the cost over 5 years or so because the bill was so high. Is this not an option to you? The APR is fairly low, if I recall, roughly 2%.

To add insult to injury, out of my 6 windows, only 3 of them were replaced and they said this was because I had double glazing in the other 3, which the previous owner put. So in fact, I was paying the same amount as the other owners but was only having half the amount of windows! GRRRRRRRRR!

:heartpuls CG :heartpuls

Anniek1969

When they first talked about doing the work we all thought they would give us plenty of time to pay but they're insistant that it would have to be repayed within 12 months of the bill being issued. I just wonder if this is legal as it seems it's going to be a very large bill with a short time to pay.