Premier Estates Ltd - property management

neilio

Does anyone on here have any experience of dealing with the property management company Premier Estates Ltd, and what are your thoughts?

I recently bought a freehold house on a new development, Premier Estates manages the common areas, such as the footpaths, gardens and flower beds, visitor car parking spaces, and also the blocks containing leasehold flats. So far I have mixed feelings about them and wondering what they'll be like in the future. In the four months I've lived there, the point of contact has changed four times.

I received an introductory message from someone when I moved in, to whom I replied with some queries about the managed land, and I never got a reply. I chased them up and got an out of office saying they'd left! I forwarded to someone else who answered my query. About a month later I contacted that person again and they had also left. A third person got in touch with me to say they'd be my point of contact and the particular issue in question would be responded to by the end of January. Never heard anything in January or February, and now I've received a Welcome Pack introducing three other names, none of whom I've heard of before! The Welcome Park I received is for leasehold flats, not freehold houses, and requested I complete my details against the leasehold covenants and return the form, which wouldn't apply to me as a freeholder. I phoned their generic customer services number, and found them quite rude. They had sent me the wrong pack and will send me the correct one in due course.

So far, I think they're a bit sloppy. Any thoughts from anyone else?

stator

My advice is to contact all the other freeholders and leaseholders and start some kind of website or e-mail list where you can all talk to each other and discuss the agents.
Often the managing agents appointed by the developer are awful and are just out to make money from you so you have to keep a close eye on them and challenge them on anything dodgey, making sure they always get several competitive quotes for all work.
Depending on how everything is set up you may be able to get rid of them and appoint your own managing company, but in some cases this is not possible. It depends how it's written into your deeds and who owns the communal areas.

BlueIsTheColour

I used to live in a flat where these were the managing agents and I found them ok, I used to hate that they used an 0870 type number for their contact number so mostly emailed and yes the property managers did change quite often. They did seem more responsive when groups of us contacted them about things as opposed to individually...

When selling, I had to chase them so many times to actually answer my buyers queries etc as their inaction was delaying my sale.