Question about leashold on new home

chelseablue

inacrisis wrote: »

Thank you.

tbh I never even thought about service charge for a new house....don't the local council pay for the upkeep of the area?

We pay 50/month at the moment on our apartment and that includes them cleaning the windows once a month all 2 of them and sweeping the leaves form the garage maybe twice a year! never seen them do any repair/maintenance work.

Are all new builds now coming with this service charge? Starting to wonder if maybe we should just look for a older house.

Thanks

Again just an opinion but yes I would look for an older house

hazyjo

Most new ones come with a service charge, from my experience.

I bought a 10-ish year old townhouse on a large development in Brentwood. FH house, but LH two garages. They came with a service charge. Wasn't that expensive, and covered things like insurance for them (there was a flat above that (not ours)). I would have preferred it not to have a SC, but what can you do... we wanted the house. We wouldn't have bought a LH house though.

Jx

RDG

Almost all new developments will have a service charge as Local Authorities don't have the budget to maintain the open space areas etc. which are required under planning. So the developers will have a management company look after these areas and the residents will have to contribute from each house. This is now the norm, only small scale developments where there is no open space requirement can avoid this.

The majority of the large house builders now only sell homes which are on 999 year leases. As said this allows them an extra income from a site following development. This is again becoming more normal than not. One thing that is of benefit from a leasehold is that if there was ever any dispute regarding the land, it is the freeholder who has to deal with it not the leaseholder.

London_Town

inacrisis wrote: »

Thank you.

tbh I never even thought about service charge for a new house....don't the local council pay for the upkeep of the area?

We pay 50/month at the moment on our apartment and that includes them cleaning the windows once a month all 2 of them and sweeping the leaves form the garage maybe twice a year! never seen them do any repair/maintenance work.

Are all new builds now coming with this service charge? Starting to wonder if maybe we should just look for a older house.

Thanks

Yes, that is the irony of the new estate service charges, you're having to pay it in addition to your Council tax. Service charges are a necessary evil with a flat as you share communal parts. However, with a modern leasehold house, you're normally just paying for inadequate grass cutting and "management" of a few flower beds.

Should you look for an older house? Yes!I couldn't recommend something more than I would this. In my town, lease holds or service charges (or both!) started to come in for new build estates around 2003. Now, I think all the major developments here seem to have them.

People often think it's just new build versus a period terrace, but it's not that black and white. Depending on the housing stock in your area, I'd look for something from the 80's or 90's. Lots of the benefits of modern homes, but very unlikely to have any charges attached. Of equal importance they'll be far more likely to have proper parking provision by way of a driveway. There were regulations that changed around 1997, that promoted greater density of build and drive ways fell out of favour as more of the smaller homes would just have allocated spaces.

Hope this helps.

zagubov

There's a campaign to reform property law here in England to protect leasehold owners from property managers.

I'd be in favour of scrapping leasehold as in Ireland and Scotland. Was surprised to read there are nearly 1 million leasehold houses in England.

inacrisis

This is probably a hypothetical question but I am sure people have thought about it. If you had a leasehold house on a 100 year lease that you bought for say 80k with only 20 years left on the lease, what options do you have at the end of 20 years? Surely the freeholder doesn't own the house? Could you legally take down the house brick by brick and leave just the empty land? :rotfl:

Thanks

MGeaney

Don't do it!
The service Charge will be a pain in the !!!! if you are trying to save for anything, especially when it goes up again, and you can't stop it. Then you finally have enough, and try to move; but no one wants the property as the high service charge and ground rent mean it isn't worth an investors money/too high to get an affordable mortgage for the average person.
then you sell at below value to just be able to move from a situation which is annoying you on a regular basis, and have to move to something proportionally reduced in price.

Can you tell I've been burnt!

Kell4life

We last bought a newbuild 8 years ago, and leasehold or maintenance charges were not the norm, Persimmon / Charles Church in particular seem to be leading the way with selling all new developments as leasehold, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this, and the first question we ask when walking into a sales office is whether the development is leasehold or freehold. The majority of newbuilds do seem to have an annual maintence charge for communal areas, I'm not entirely sure how often the fees are renewed, but I have a feeling it's annually. In terms of buying a freehold, Persimmon told me we had to wait at least 2 years before being able to purchase the freehold, but didn't know any further details about it and suggested speaking to a solicitor about it, this is when we walked away.
We have since found a smaller developer, they aren't as greedy as the big boys, no leaseholds, no maintence charges, good quality of fixtures. Orbit Homes.

seven-day-weekend

inacrisis wrote: »

This is probably a hypothetical question but I am sure people have thought about it. If you had a leasehold house on a 100 year lease that you bought for say 80k with only 20 years left on the lease, what options do you have at the end of 20 years? Surely the freeholder doesn't own the house? Could you legally take down the house brick by brick and leave just the empty land? :rotfl:

Thanks

You are entitled to stay in the house but the freeholder may ask you to pay rent.

With a leasehold, you never own the property, what you ahve bought is the right to live there for whatever length the lease is, or to dispose of (sell) the lease.

http://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/security-of-tenure-when-the-lease-runs-out/

david1951

It's hit and miss. Sometimes the area around the property is kept nice by gardeners etc for a reasonable cost.

Or...the builders use it to extract as much money as possible. They get to choose what company repairs that 'broken' pavement (them) and at what cost (£ashighasyoulike).

From the other posters it sounds like mainly miss.