Flat vs House costs

DullGreyGuy

Miri_J said:

AlexMac said:

The advice above is good; but as regards your questions about cost comparisons;

we’ve owned three leasehold flats over the years, plus two ex- council buy to let flats where the Coucil are freeholders. All but one were 2-bedrooms

Service charges (including building’s insurance) are/were in the range £900 - £1,400 per annum but every 8-10 years or so there has been a bigger one off bill for communal repairs, external decoration, windows replacement, roof replacement or repair. These have ranged from a couple of grand to £5k. 

With the exception of the two BtLs, they’ve all been ‘shared freeholds” in converted period blocks which we self manged, thus keeping costs well down (no dodgy management agents or absent freeholders in it for the money). 

So a well-chosen flat might be OK (notwithstanding my preference for smaller self/managed shared freehold blocks)  but I’m pleased we’re now in a low-maintenance freehold house as it gives us total control;  buy one like ours with no damp and a decent roof if you go down that route. 

We’ve spent less, annualised, on our house’s repairs over the past 12 years than we’ve averaged on most of the flats; just two external paint jobs on woodwork at £1-2k, plus a new boiler and discretionary improvements, which would be down to you, even in a flat

Thank you, that's really useful information Alex. Are you actually saying that, on top of the £900 - £1,400 per annum, you personally were presented with bills for 2-5k every 8-10 years? That seems like a lot. It seems like a similar amount to what I'd expect to spend on external maintenance if I bought a fairly new house!

I wonder whether anyone else is able to give me similar information to compare?

It will vary notably depending on where you are and what the development comes with. Our service charge is about £2,500 per year but it includes a share of a left, a reasonable amount of communal space and seems like someone is on site most days if to do nothing more than deal with the bin shoot for those on higher floors (switch the bins, clean up the mess if its overflowed etc), electric gates, CCTV etc. 

We've had one section 21 since moving in 5 years ago which was about £750 per unit for replacing some flat roofing following a leak. 

The flats across the road where we used to live (rented) was about £8,000 per year (was share of freehold though not all flats were) but then all the windows were needing replacing and serious works on the roof needed, the quote for the scaffolding had been £1m and all 10 lifts had been refurbished/replaced. Not sure it's supposed to be done that way but they seemed to have been trying to build up a fund to lessen the blow of the really big works. It did come with certain other luxuries like a pool/spa and 24/7 concierge but the block next door contributed to both the pool and the carpark and their fees were more like £4,000 a year (their concierge wasn't 24/7)