Get rid of private housing communal area management company

nyk31

My wife and I bought a house in June last year that has a management company responsible for the communal areas! that the local authority wouldn't take responsibility for.

We have just been billed £40.25 for 6 months services. £4.90 services which was. £888 split between the whole community. £5.35 as a management fee. The £30 on top of that was for overheads incurred by the running of their office!!!! I'm instantly sick that our communities annuL bill of £7,127 only £888 of that is for services actually performed.

Has anybody dealt with this before? Can you change the company? Can you get rid of them?

This seems like an extortion racket as it seems there is no competition for this service and they can do and charge what they like for invariably, doing nothing.

marathonic

My estate has been having problems with theirs for years.

It costs a little under £40 per quarter of which over half is their admin costs. There are 90 houses in the estate so that's near £2,000 per quarter for arranging the public liability insurance and arranging the person to cut the communal grass.

The problem is, moving to a new management company requires a lot of effort and organising and agreement from other residents - the residents can even manage it themselves.

If you take a step back and look at your estates £80.50 per year charge, who is really going to go to all the hassle for such pitiful savings?

By hassle, I mean chasing up payments from other residents and so on - not the organising of the little work that is required.

vivatifosi

You could possibly get a cheaper managing agent but change is a pita. Another option is to bring it in house and do it among residents, but that's a lot of work. Plus you'd have people turning up at directors doors at all hours with their gripes.

Here our fees are a bit over £200 pa per house and there's quite a bit of communal land. Our management fees are £3600 of the total which is pretty good. On top of that we have insurances that are also paid by the MA. They are the biggest single draw on our budget but not anywhere near as big a percentage as yours. After that for us, gardening, maintenance and our sinking fund are the big expenses. Our estate is 20 years old so we need a sinking fund for things like replacement drainage and resurfacing that are big, irregular maintenance costs.

ETA: it's also worth the directors of the management company checking what they are getting for their money. If they are willing to share the load, it may be that they can come to a lower cost arrangement with the managing agents in return for taking on some of their activities.

nyk31

Is it not possible for the local authority to take it over? It is literally just 3 patches of grass with some bushes and saplings on that they are responsible for

Richard_Webster

Builder probably wanted Council to take it over but they either refused or said they wanted a large lump sum to cover the future cost of maintenance - so builder got a management company involved.

Is this company one where the residents own the shares or is it entirely separate and run by some professional managing agent group?

If the latter it is doubtful you can do anything about it. If the former it will be a case of getting the members together and holding a meeting to make decisions about what will be done/not done in the future. If an agent has been appointed to do the legwork then if you have control you can sack that agent if you want. Getting a majority vote at a general meeting won't be that easy - getting a quorum may even be difficult! However, somehow I doubt you will have much say - the whole thing is probably out of your hands.

propertyman

£80.50 for the year, £6.70 a month. Hmm thats not a lot. £70 a unit in management costs seems high and £25 to £30 might be right so think that you need to look at what you think are overheads.

Still £80 a year, many in these situations would love it to be that low!