Estate Management Charge

bylromarha

Tancred wrote: »

Hmmm. And I assume you also get no council tax rebate to boot! :mad: Have you raised this with your local councillor or even MP? It seems absolutely outrageous and yet you don't hear a word about it in the press or on TV. If I lived on an estate with gates, security guards etc I could understand paying the charge, but otherwise no way.

The company managing the estate where my intended house is located is called HML Andertons.

Of course no rebate.

It's standard practice on new estates these days - and as I'm now time poor compared to when I tried to help the estate take over the estate, I don't have the capacity to take this on - everyone else on the estate just wants to whinge and do nothing.

bylromarha

ging84 wrote: »

I am currently looking at a new build, which has such a covenant attached, not all the houses have to pay a service charge,

That's how some houses on our estate started - so they didn't care that our charges were going up and up.

Then the management agency invoked some clause on the contract that none of the solicitors had picked up on, meaning around 80% of houses 6 months ago had a £200 charge slapped on them out of the blue, payable within 7 days. Now they care.

However, I'm less bothered as the fact they are now paying mean my charges went down a lot.

House is now for sale, so am looking forward to the end of this. Will never buy a house with this type of covenant again.

Tancred

My solicitor is investigating the fine details of this management charge, so I can't comment further until more information is available.

Would it be reasonable to renegotiate the price on the basis of this, as I was not aware of any such charge when originally submitting my offer? I am reluctant to pull out completely given the hassle involved and the shortage of alternative properties at present.

I would assume a £5k discount should be reasonable.

Dan-Dan

Tancred wrote: »

My solicitor is investigating the fine details of this management charge, so I can't comment further until more information is available.

Would it be reasonable to renegotiate the price on the basis of this, as I was not aware of any such charge when originally submitting my offer? I am reluctant to pull out completely given the hassle involved and the shortage of alternative properties at present.

I would assume a £5k discount should be reasonable.

Based on a current yearly charge of £100 ?

Good luck with that

Tancred

Dan-Dan wrote: »

Based on a current yearly charge of £100 ?

Good luck with that

£100 X 50 years = £5,000.

And of course the charge is liable to rise..........

Dan-Dan

Like i said , good luck!

ging84

If it was truely never mentioned i would be furious
seems fairly negligent of the estate agent not to disclose it
If it had been for a larger amount, it could have pushed the house outside your affordability and killed the sale, and you'd have been left well out of pocket.

Tancred

ging84 wrote: »

If it was truely never mentioned i would be furious
seems fairly negligent of the estate agent not to disclose it
If it had been for a larger amount, it could have pushed the house outside your affordability and killed the sale, and you'd have been left well out of pocket.

It was indeed never mentioned by the estate agent - we would not have offered on the house if we had known of this additional management charge. We did know about car port lease but that should be no more than £15 a year.

And unfortunately we might yet be out of pocket.......

Tancred

Dan-Dan wrote: »

Like i said , good luck!

Well, it's good luck for the vendor as well as our agreed offer is already £5k above the RICS valuation because we liked the house. If we pulled out the issue would probably arise again for the vendor.

Tancred

One more thing worth mentioning is that the vendor was untruthful when he completed the property questionnaire, as he ticked the 'no' box in reference to the question about whether there were any management charges in relation to the property. This could be construed as fraudulent behaviour because he must have known that there was an annual charge - he signed the deeds!