Maisonette maintenance charge

toml85

I have seen a two bedroom maisonette (90 year lease) that I like and can afford. It is in a quite nice area, but the only thing that is putting me off is the maintenance charge which is £700 per year. To me this seems quite high for a maisonette. There are communal gardens, but apart from that I am not sure what it pays for. Does this seem like a lot and would it put you off buying?

retepetsir

Hard to say without knowing more, i.e. how many flats/maisonettes in block etc.

However ~£60 a month is not unreasonable. We used to own a flat in a block of 14 and paid ~£100 a month with only a small communal garden. It wasn't managed particularly well and the rest went on communal electric/water charge, window cleaning (never happened), gardening, management/accounting feed, maintenance pot, etc.

It wouldn't put me off buying but I'd check to see if any large work is coming up.

Our charge often doubled to £200 a month (!) as they wanted to fix/rebuild the flat roof and so it was split between just 14 flats, not great.

toml85

There are 4 to a block, however there are several blocks. The communal grounds look quite well maintained to me. It always looks quite nice when I am there.

I have heard back from the estate agent and apparently the £700 includes buildings insurance and any maintenance or repairs to buildings. The current owner says they have not paid anything more than the maintenance charge for any extra works/repairs.

Conrad

Sounds about average to me. Nicer blocks that have a nice feel will tend to have a reasonably high charge.

vansboy

Where I live now, similar to what you describe, in blocks of 4, we pay £10.50/year and provide our own insurance cover.

It has no regular maintainence carried out on the grounds, so most of us 'do our bit', by cutting grass and tidying up. Some of the rented properties are slightly more neglected, depending on how long people stay in them.

There was an attempt to have an active management company, which would have given us charges much higher, if all the propsed works were carried out. It didnt happen, as nobody could agree.

If something desperate needed doing, like some trees cut and a wall fixing, we all paid about £400 towards it.

The new place I'm planning on buying is block of 12, with a charge, including insurance, of £400/year. The tenants have formed a proper management company between them, the residents are mostly retired folk, doing some bits themselves and it looks extremely neat and tidy.

VB

emH_3

Hello,

I pay charges and £700 is quite reasonable, I pay £65 a month but I pay extra as our charge is set up by the council so when the billing period is up for the year they send a final bill and we got caught out and had to pay £200 extra.

However last year we got £300.00 back.

We pay for the same thing and my paying extra each month we normally only pay service charge for 8 months of the year and then we are free until next billing period.

We have been living there since 2008 and I've never had to pay for anything extra and the service charge has been consistent each year.

If this is charged by the council then you can phone them up and ask them questions about extra charges.

I think we are lucky the borough next to us pay £2000 a year!!!

AlexMac

Sounds reasonable to me, in that I have 2 ex-council BTL maisonettes whose annual service charge for insurance, communal lighting routine maintenance, caretaking and grounds (which aren't much cop!) are £700 and £900 respectively p.a.

But that does not include one-off major repairs such as external decoration every few years, roof repair or window replacement so I'd assume you may pay extra for these; your solicitor will ask as part of the conveyance. Another issue is the extent to which you control these costs and decisons. Is there a remote freeholder or management company or are you may a member/shareholder/Director of a shared freehold company like Vanboy, above. Makes a big difference.

We didn't mind the £1,200 pa service charge in our last leasehold flat as we controlled this with the other five co-owners and almost half went to a 'sinking fund' so we had enough in the pot when the 5-7 yearly £15k scaffolding, decoration and guttering repair bill came in; in fact we specified, tendered and QS'd this work ourselves to save money rather than pay a management agent.

One final thing- use the leasehold extension calculator eleswhere on the MSE website to calculate what it costs to extend; http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/extend-your-lease

90 years is OK but you'll struggle to sell if you wait til you're a couple of years from the magic 80 number after which costs rocket; in fact as you need to wait 2 years to gain the rights to extend, it means the flat could be unsellable in only 7-8 years from now. We're looking for a flat and rejected a couple for that reason, choosing one with a 900 yr lease in a 'shared freehold' (with a new roof and a £420 pa service -charge to boot; we also rejected some with charges well over £1k pa on the grounds that £1k buys a lot of mortgage!)

Good luck!