£4000 bill from maintenance co selling advice.

pinknfluffy29

hello all

my husband had a one bedroom small flat in essex qhich once he moved in with me he let out, 1st to a tenant who was slow with rent but we got it but she moved out after the 6mth tenancy expired. next we let it out to someone who has not paid a single peeny rent since he has lived there (his mum who's guarantor has paid lots and we have had a few hb cheques) we are in court on thursday to get him evicted as he owes £2654 and has ignored his notices to quit. so not only are we paying for my place we are paying the mortgage on husband's flat. so we are broke.

the maintenance company has just sent us a bill for £4000 for works to be done on the communal areas of the flats ie. roof work, repaing guttering, varnishing stairs and repointing some brickwork. we do not have £4000 as we have just got married and have that on credit cards (which we are paying off at a good rate) our concerns are that they want a huge amount of money within 1 month and to spend on things that my husband pays £600 service charge for specifically those problems (the varnishing, repairs at least) and they want the money upfront, what happens if they collect the £60,000 from all the flats and then they close business?? or the work is done by a bunch of cowboys and needs a further £**** spent to fix? or they send a bill like this every 3/4 years???

we want to sell the flat but husband is concerned that we will have to pay a fortune to soak up the £4000 by either paying it first or deducting it from the asking price IYSWIM!!!

any help or advice would be much appreciated

sorry for such a long one!!!!!

sarah_elton

You can ask the management company for a breakdown of exactly what that amount will be spent on, and get quotes for the work yourself if you think they are charging too much.

Also, if you're sure it's standard repairs that should be covered by the annual charge then query it. We have a rolling four-year redecoration of each building, and money accumulates for it from our service charge. Do you get a breakdown of what your annual charge is for, and how much goes into funds for repairs etc?

First step is to find out exactly what work they're proposing and whether you think it's (a) reasonable and (b) fairly priced.

I'm not sure what your rights are beyond that point though. Someone else will have more knowledge.

Merton

Sell, sell, sell asap. You really don't want to be stuck with it losing thousands. Just get rid, before the inevitable.

Doozergirl

You'll have to delare the impending bill.

We were presented with a way OTT bill for windows for the communal parts. As a block of four, we simply got together and went for the "Right to Manage" (RTM). That means you besically dump the Managing Agent and take over the running of the property yourselves. If you are in a small block, it would benefit you to go down that route.

In order to delay the bill until the RTM came through, we wrote to the Managing Agent saying that we were disputing the reasonableness of the work and it's costs and wanted the LVT to rule on whether it was reasonable. In reality nothing happened as they were shortly served notive. Sounds a bit complicated but the company that were dealing with the RTM told me exactly what to write!

It meant we could sell without paying the bill, though we did have some essential repairs carried out between us and now the others can decide what they want to do and when AND get cheaper quotes (windows were not the first priority) so we weren't manipulating anyone.

I started a thread about it. There's another link in there to the Leasehold Advisory Service who know everything there is to know about RTM and the companies you can use to help you. My thread is here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=271485

I'd really recommend it, we had no problems selling with that going through at all.

realwildone

I thought renting out was easy money.

You mean some people won't pay???