New Build Service Charges

supersaver2

Hi all,

Just a quick question. My sister is looking at buying a new build house and has been made aware of service charges. The house is a 4 bed town house and she has been told there will be a service charge of appropriately £200.00 every 6 months? This seems odd to me, I can understand if she were buying one of the apartments in the apartment block on the estate, but not a separate house with no shared areas. She's had a look at the items and charges and they list things such as window cleaning (yet this is only the apartments), maintaining the entry system (again not relevant), alarm system (apartment again), fire equipment maintenance etc There is only upkeep of the small grassed areas on the itemised list that seems relevant and this seems very costly to me!

Perhaps this is the norm, never lived on a new build estate so no idea. I'd not be happy paying these extra along with my full council tax!

Any thoughts? Anybody else live on a new build estate and pay these charges, are you happy with the service you receive for the money you pay?

Having a quick Google pulls some worrying facts that the service charge industry isn't regulated so they can increase the charges and you are stuck paying them.

cattie

As the property is on an estate, the charges will cover things like electricity for the roads on the estate & the upkeep of them. A portion of the service charge usually also includes the managing agents fee for managing the estate.

There are some well known managing agents that you hear negative things about & if you know the name of the agents who are going to be managing the estate, then try a google search to see if it brings anything up.

Generally the service charges for an apartment/flat tend to be much higher, often in the region of £1500-£2k per year, but does usually include the buildings insurance.

supersaver2

Thanks Cattie, yes I just checked Google and quite a few horror stories! Will be reporting back to my sister.

moneyistooshorttomention

You don't mention whether the roads on this new-build estate are normal or no - ie normal = adopted by the Council. Not normal = unadopted.

If the roads aren't those normal (ie adopted) ones then there might be charges for maintenance of the roads at some point.

Just covering all bases...

jbainbridge

Would put me off ... guess some are willing to pay.

moneyistooshorttomention

Not so much "willing to pay" as forced to by living in a poor part of the country imo.

Richer parts of the country seem to be maintaining our norms - but my suspicion is that poorer parts are going more into a mindset I've recently encountered of "batting that ball to and fro between them" and trying their hardest to shift their costs onto someone else's shoulders under any excuse they can think up.

Where I come from - I've not heard of this happening yet (hopefully wont happen ever). In other parts of Britain there does seem to be a noticeable amount of "ducking and diving" going on of trying to shift financial responsibilities onto someone else's shoulders if possible:eek:

Admits to being shocked at watching this sort of malarkey going on...

Kell4life

We are looking to buy a newbuild house and have been told about service charges, approx £250 a year to maintain trees, play equipment, grass areas. If your house has a shared private drive or road, there is an additional fee for that too. This seems fairly new as we bought a newbuild 7 years ago and didn't come across this.

One thing that did shock me was a Persimmon site, they are now only doing leasehold even on houses, and the houses aren't cheaper either, some are nearly £400k for a 4 bed detached. It's a 999 year lease, when I asked who owns the lease, they told me Persimmon did, and when i asked how long the annual fee was fixed for they told me 5 years, and then it rises with inflation.

That has put me off, apparently all Persimmon sites will be doing this going forward, so we won't be buying from Persimmon!

Developers seem to be getting more crafty and greedy.

Pete9501

Last year we sold a freehold 4 bed town house which had £2400 pa service charges. Service charges were increasing at £250 a year. This included water, bldg insurance and exterior decorating. However, we seemed to pay full price for everything done on the estate and the MA whilst quite good didn't have an incentive to shop around. Asking a local insurance broker for a buildings quote saved 18% just by asking, why couldn't the MA do the same. The answer is there is nothing to gained by the MA. Oh and there is a standard 10-15% kickback to the MA for arranging things like insurance.

Glad we are out of it now.

Lord_Baltimore

Worth a read: link