Flat management company - large unpaid bill

ginandtonic81

Hi, hope you can help. Not entirely sure this is the right place for this post...first time poster!

I own a flat in a small block of 8.

We had always managed our own affairs - ie. we had no management company acting on our behalf. We simply arranged to pay communal electricity and buildings insurance by collecting the money from each of the 8 owners and sending off directly.

Due to a problem several years ago with arrears and a difficult owner in one of the flats we signed up with a managing agent and stayed with them for around 3 years.

Due to the spiralling cost of their fees and the terrible service we decided to close the account and served notice. This was accepted and agreed and the account was closed.

We have returned to self management and paid our buildings insurance for 2012.

Some 8 months after closing our account with the management company I receive a chasing letter from our insurance company for the premium for 2011 - which has over £1000 outstanding.

On contacting the management company, they said they had taken a loan out to cover the insurance and just cancelled the payments on the loan when our account was closed.

Is there anything I can do about this? They are arguing that we did not pay them enough to cover the insurance - however they did not give us any arrears notice and did not comment at all about the outstanding amount when I closed the account - and I specifically asked on several occasions if all was settled.

Hope you can help and let me know if you need any more information. Sorry this is such a long post.

Thanks in advance.

propertyman

Well in answer to your question " is there anything outstanding" then they were right- they cancelled the remaining payments!

There is nothing wrong with that, it is an ill informed question and a less that helpful answer, as the agent is not paid in the same way as you pay a builder, they administer your bills and your money, and any bills or liabilities do not go away when you terminated their management.

If you own the Insurance company then you owe them and will have to arrange payment as the insurance policy, as it should be is in your name not the agents.

If you go back to your end of year accounts what was paid in and what was paid out, you should see the insurance for that year was much less than the previous year, and a lot less than the budget.

Sorry but what you were hoping for is not what an agent is, agents run things, not a contractor.

G_M

What did the accounts they handed back to you show when you took over self-management?

You must have reviewed these to see what they had spent, what fees they had deducted, what income they had achieved, which owners had not paid their contributions etc......?

And within this must have been the insurance premium and the loan.

Fire_Fox

It's only £110 a leaseholder, you can waste that much in time chasing your own tail over this. Agree check the supplied accounts. In future you can chase for arrears of service charges via a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal which is cheap and relatively straightforward, you can often then apply to the lender to have the debt added to the leaseholder's mortgage.