Can you buy out the factor fees?

Legacy_user

Thinking of buying a house but has no gardens and factors are £600 per annum...wow

I phoned the factors but they said EVERY house (105) in the estate to sign off from the factors.

Is this right? Are factors daylight robbery or what?

davidmcn

berbastrike wrote: »

Thinking of buying a house but has no gardens and factors are £600 per annum...wow

I phoned the factors but they said EVERY house (105) in the estate to sign off from the factors.

Is this right? Are factors daylight robbery or what?

What are the common parts of the estate? If there's shared landscaping, private roads, play areas etc then it adds up. Not sure what you mean by "buy out", but if the majority of owners agree then you can change the factors, or manage it yourselves.

System

I like the sound of "manage it yourself" and save £600 per year!

agrinnall

berbastrike wrote: »

I like the sound of "manage it yourself" and save £600 per year!

What makes you think you can save £600 a year? If all 105 properties are paying the same that means the factors are taking in £63,000 a year, and they are surely doing something with that money. You might end up paying less, but I can't see how it would be the full £600, and of course someone would have to take on the responsibility of collecting and spending the money - is that someone you?

upoiupou

a) Can you get a breakdown of where the factor fees go?
b) What do the title deeds specify? The may require the use of factors

As I understand it, the fee may not be only for arranging and managing work but also paying for the work itself. At that rate I would hope so! If so, some of the cost wouldn't go away even if you were managing things yourself/ves.

My experience of running a management company for just two flats was that it was a lot of work to organise things. I got quotes for having a company handle it for us, but it was a ridiculous cost. I already had experience of accounts, annual returns, risk assessments, health and safety etc and it wasn't too much of a learning curve for me to do the work, but it was a lot of time and effort. I can't imagine dealing with 105 households!

£600 a year is painful but I think trying to co-ordinate 105 households over anything would be worse, to be honest.

bod1467

My estate has 42 properties. We used to self-factor. At the beginning it worked OK - we had a resident's committee (I was chairman), secretary, treasurer etc., held monthly meetings (minuted), and arranged contractors to carry out relevant tasks (mostly ground maintenance/gardening - the roads were adopted by the council) and arranged liability insurance for the common areas.

Getting every property to pay their share was OK at first but became progressively more difficult. Eventually we decided we'd had enough of the hassle and so arranged a residents meeting to vote on getting a factor (and deciding who that would be). Then we were factored for a few years.

In the end the council adopted the main areas of common land, and residents living adjacent to grass verges etc. maintain those parts (e.g. grass cutting).

tl;dr ... self-factoring sounds good in theory; the reality can be very different.

System

There is very little gardens. There is a small play park and a few flower bed type patches.

If you get the council to "adopt" these areas, I imagine they will charge you for this?

bod1467

In our case there was no charge to us that I recall. (Scotland). Perhaps we caught the council at the right time.

davidmcn

berbastrike wrote: »

There is very little gardens. There is a small play park and a few flower bed type patches.

If you get the council to "adopt" these areas, I imagine they will charge you for this?

Councils now don't tend to adopt these sorts of areas, you'd best assume that they'll remain the owners' responsibility.

stator

It could be to pay for a sewage pumping station or something similar that you can't see.
If you are buying a property your solicitor will want to see all the accounts for the mangement company
Whether you have a right to change management company or self manage depends on the type of house, freehold or leasehold and who owns the common areas and how they appoint the management company.

davidmcn

stator wrote: »

It could be to pay for a sewage pumping station or something similar that you can't see.
If you are buying a property your solicitor will want to see all the accounts for the mangement company
Whether you have a right to change management company or self manage depends on the type of house, freehold or leasehold and who owns the common areas and how they appoint the management company.

Note we're talking about Scotland. Everything is freehold, the majority of owners can decide who manages.