Do freehold houses have to pay a service charge

Meg1593

Hi all, I'm a first time buyer and have lived in my new home for over a year now. We have just been sent a service charge bill from DJC property management charging us nearly £200 for services on the estate. Im just looking for some advice on whether we should have to pay this as we are freehold rather than leasehold? Thank you! 

loubel

It is increasingly common on new estates for there to be a freehold service charge, covering the roads and communal areas which are no longer maintained by local authorities. You should have been told about it by your solicitor when you bought.

RelievedSheff

These will be estate management charges for the shared areas on the estate that are not adopted by the local authority.

Your house being freehold has nothing to do with this charge.

You will have been advised of the charges when you signed up for the house. Read back through your documentation. It was on the reservation form when we bought our new build last year as per below:

pinkteapot

Google ‘fleecehold’ 

Mickey666

Another reason not to buy a new build.
Developers being charged for ‘community infrastructure improvements’ as a condition of planning consent, which is then passed on, thus inflating the house prices, then the local council not adopting their ‘normal’ responsibilities for maintaining public areas, leaving the new owners to pick up these sorts of charges forevermore.
Nice.

Silvertabby

Another reason why houses on our 1990s estate sell like hot cakes - the local council adopted the roads/communal spaces, so no service charges.  Unlike newer estates nearby.

RelievedSheff

Mickey666 said:

Another reason not to buy a new build.
Developers being charged for ‘community infrastructure improvements’ as a condition of planning consent, which is then passed on, thus inflating the house prices, then the local council not adopting their ‘normal’ responsibilities for maintaining public areas, leaving the new owners to pick up these sorts of charges forevermore.
Nice.

Not all new build estates have estate management charges. Ours doesn't despite having lots of public green spaces. It depends on how proactive the local authority is at adopting public open spaces.

Local authorities will adopt the highways on new build estates but will not adopt private shared driveways which serve up to 6 properties. The maintenance for these is paid for by the home owners.

You can't really blame the developers for this situation. The local authorities stipulate what green space is required as part of the planning process. The same local authority but different departments then refuse to adopt the green spaces. Someone has to pay for their maintenance which is how the whole management company situation has arisen. 

The local authorities argue that their limit of adoption responsibility is the highways, footpaths and street lighting. Anything else is just a nicety for the residents and not their responsibility. As local authority budgets are cut further they will look to further reduce their responsibilities. 

Mickey666

I don’t blame the developers at all - they inevitably just pass any such charges on to house buyers, which is hardly surprising.
What is surprising is that some buyers don’t seem to fully understand what they are buying into.

Thrugelmir

Seems fair that users of the space pay for the upkeep. Rather than other less fortunate council rate taxpayers. 

Mickey666

If you wish to entrench such divisions then I suppose it is.

AskAsk

on estates there will be maintenance costs for the estate, like lighting, clearing the estate of rubbish and litter, emptying the bins for example, and some estates will have a park area so that needs to be maintained.  all this will be billed in an annual service charge.

it will appear as a covenant in your property deed.