Management company demand sublet fee for same tenants

rachel230

£40 Is what is deemed reasonable. LEASE should have advised you that quite a few cases at FTT have come to this conclusion. Check out this and other information here:
https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/challenge-100-subletting-demand-reveals-nothing-owed

buglawton

eddddy wrote: »

You're missing the point.

Assuming that the tribunal agree that the registration fee is an administration fee...

• Don't concentrate on looking at other tribunal decisions

• Concentrate on asking your freeholder what they do in return for whatever fee they are asking for

Then consider...

• a) Is whatever work they say they are doing 'reasonable' things for a freeholder to do for registering a sublet?

• b) Is whatever they are charging 'reasonable' for the work they say they are doing? (e.g. Assuming a rate of about £50 per hour) Plus out-of-pocket costs.

If either a) or b) is unreasonable, you can consider a tribunal application.

Unless you do the above, I think it's unlikely that you would be successful at tribunal.

The freeholder and their solicitors refuses to discuss the detail of what work they do with the sublet registration info. There's little scope anyway - they just store the info in a supposedly secure place. Maybe a clerk reads the standard AST sublet contract to check it's valid.

Indeed I am considering a tribunal application but leasehold-advice repeatedly tells me this type of fee is not eligible for tribunal consideration and to go to court.

buglawton

rachel230 wrote: »

£40 Is what is deemed reasonable. LEASE should have advised you that quite a few cases at FTT have come to this conclusion. Check out this and other information here:
https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/challenge-100-subletting-demand-reveals-nothing-owed

Of course I've seen that one and Leasehold Advice know it too. That case was quite different. As I mentioned before, there's a search available on old cases. There does not seem to be one simple match on OPs or my scenarios - routine registration of a sublet contract whenever the tenant (or landlord) name changes.

SmashedAvacado

I believe its thoroughly pointless to be debating what a reasonable fee would be here. The obvious point is that the sublease does not need registering - if there is no new sublease.

Generally I have seen registration fees of £150 or more - and to be honest that seems to me to be fairly reasonable.

buglawton

So you're debating in this forum what a reasonable fee should be?