No Communication from Property Management Company

zepplin_

I purchased a leasehold property in August 2023 - I paid the service charge and ground rent fees until August of that year through my solicitor as well as the membership fee to the management company. Since moving in I am yet to receive any communications, emails, letters, etc from the management company, FirstPort. I assumed it just took time to switch everything over.

Now that I have been living in this new property for over a year, I have not received any information on the service charge fees. I have sent multiple emails to the property manger at FirstPort who is looking after the apartment building I am in. I have also reached out to FirstPort directly and received no responses at all.  

Does anyone recommend what I should do? 
Any advice would be apricated.    

eddddy

In general, no Service Charges or Ground Rent is payable until you get a valid demand (a bill) for it.

The only thing you have to be careful of is... Did your solicitor serve a valid 'Notice of Assignment' on the freeholder/management company? And did you or your solicitor get an acknowledgement that it was received and actioned?

The 'Notice of Assignment' tells the freeholder/management company that you are the new owner - so bills and other communications can be sent to you.

If no valid 'Notice of Assignment' has been served, the freeholder/management company will continue to treat the previous owner as the current owner - and send bills to them.


So a better question to ask the management company might be whether they've received and processed a 'Notice of Assignment'. 

zepplin_

Thank you eddddy,

I had a look through the documents from my solicitor and found a reference to 'Notice of Transfer/Charge' document for the management company that also stated 'There is no requirement for Notice to be served' - if this is the same document you are referring to then it might be that they will continue to treat the previous owner as the current owner 

eddddy

zepplin_ said:

I had a look through the documents from my solicitor and found a reference to 'Notice of Transfer/Charge' document for the management company that also stated 'There is no requirement for Notice to be served' - if this is the same document you are referring to then it might be that they will continue to treat the previous owner as the current owner 

Yes - "Notice of Transfer" is the same as "Notice of Assignment".

A "Notice of Charge" is telling the freeholder who your mortgage lender is.

Leases generally specify that a Notice of Transfer / Notice of Assignment must be served, I guess your solicitor is saying that your lease doesn't specify that.

So there's the question of how you formally notify Firstport?

Firstport manage thousands of leasehold properties, and I would guess that 95%+ of the leases require a  Notice of Transfer / Notice of Assignment to be served. So Firstport might not have noticed that your lease doesn't.


If this really is the problem, it could be quite serious. The following could all have been sent to the previous owner:

• Service charge bills
• Non-payment reminder letters - resulting in extra fees
• Solicitor's letters about non-payment - resulting in solicitor's fees
• Debt collector's letters - resulting in debt collection fees
• Court papers about a case to forfeit your lease (i.e. repossess your home) for non-payment of service charges

Normally, there's a safety net in that Firstport would contact your mortgage lender before forfeiting your lease - and your mortgage lender would normally pay the debt, to avoid losing their security.

But if no Notice of Charge has been served, Firstport won't know who your mortgage lender is.

Sam_666

Have you checked your title deeds record? Are you listed, with your bank on it as lender?
These changes cant be done without freeholder approval.

ReadySteadyPop

eddddy said:

zepplin_ said:

I had a look through the documents from my solicitor and found a reference to 'Notice of Transfer/Charge' document for the management company that also stated 'There is no requirement for Notice to be served' - if this is the same document you are referring to then it might be that they will continue to treat the previous owner as the current owner 

Yes - "Notice of Transfer" is the same as "Notice of Assignment".

A "Notice of Charge" is telling the freeholder who your mortgage lender is.

Leases generally specify that a Notice of Transfer / Notice of Assignment must be served, I guess your solicitor is saying that your lease doesn't specify that.

So there's the question of how you formally notify Firstport?

Firstport manage thousands of leasehold properties, and I would guess that 95%+ of the leases require a  Notice of Transfer / Notice of Assignment to be served. So Firstport might not have noticed that your lease doesn't.


If this really is the problem, it could be quite serious. The following could all have been sent to the previous owner:

• Service charge bills
• Non-payment reminder letters - resulting in extra fees
• Solicitor's letters about non-payment - resulting in solicitor's fees
• Debt collector's letters - resulting in debt collection fees
• Court papers about a case to forfeit your lease (i.e. repossess your home) for non-payment of service charges

Normally, there's a safety net in that Firstport would contact your mortgage lender before forfeiting your lease - and your mortgage lender would normally pay the debt, to avoid losing their security.

But if no Notice of Charge has been served, Firstport won't know who your mortgage lender is.

Wouldn`t they just send letters to the property?

ReadySteadyPop

zepplin_ said:

I purchased a leasehold property in August 2023 - I paid the service charge and ground rent fees until August of that year through my solicitor as well as the membership fee to the management company. Since moving in I am yet to receive any communications, emails, letters, etc from the management company, FirstPort. I assumed it just took time to switch everything over.

Now that I have been living in this new property for over a year, I have not received any information on the service charge fees. I have sent multiple emails to the property manger at FirstPort who is looking after the apartment building I am in. I have also reached out to FirstPort directly and received no responses at all.  

Does anyone recommend what I should do? 
Any advice would be apricated.    

Just pick up the phone and phone them, ask to be referred to someone who can help straight away, the manager could have left, or be on leave or forgotten to update their e-mail (much as all that sounds unlikely if they manage thousands of properties)

eddddy

ReadySteadyPop said:

Wouldn`t they just send letters to the property?

Yes, unless...

• The previous owner told the Managing Agent in writing to send letters to a different address - so they would still be sending them to that address. (That's especially likely if the property was tenanted previously.)

• Or the previous owner might have set up a Royal Mail Redirect for post addressed to their name. (Maybe a few days before they completed, so the seller got the notification letter from Royal Mail.)

The above might seem like grasping at straws... but the combination of:

• The OP's solicitor saying that no Notice of Transfer is required
• The OP receiving no letters at all from the managing agent
• The managing agent failing to reply to the OP's emails (perhaps because as far as they're concerned the OP isn't the leaseholder. And they won't discuss Service Charges etc with a 'stranger'.)

... makes it sound like it's very possible that there's a problem.

eddddy

ReadySteadyPop said:

Just pick up the phone and phone them, ask to be referred to someone who can help straight away, the manager could have left, or be on leave or forgotten to update their e-mail (much as all that sounds unlikely if they manage thousands of properties)

I'd agree that it's worth trying to phone them...

But they don't have a great reputation for customer service: https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/firstport-co-uk

And they say they have over 3,000 employees, and manage over 310,000 homes across 5,600 developments.

And the OP has had no letters from them, so has no property reference number, no contact name to ask for, no department name to ask for .


So the OP should prepare themselves for a bit of a challenge in getting to speak to the right person.


(And I think 'The Property Manager' is probably the person you speak to about things like blown bulbs in the hallway, overflowing bins, uncut grass etc, rather than legal matters. But maybe the Property Manager would be able to point you towards the right person.)

zepplin_

eddddy said:

ReadySteadyPop said:

Just pick up the phone and phone them, ask to be referred to someone who can help straight away, the manager could have left, or be on leave or forgotten to update their e-mail (much as all that sounds unlikely if they manage thousands of properties)

I'd agree that it's worth trying to phone them...

But they don't have a great reputation for customer service

And they say they have over 3,000 employees, and manage over 310,000 homes across 5,600 developments.

And the OP has had no letters from them, so has no property reference number, no contact name to ask for, no department name to ask for .


So the OP should prepare themselves for a bit of a challenge in getting to speak to the right person.


(And I think 'The Property Manager' is probably the person you speak to about things like blown bulbs in the hallway, overflowing bins, uncut grass etc, rather than legal matters. But maybe the Property Manager would be able to point you towards the right person.)

I can confirm their customer service is not the best!

I called my solicitor, they sent the notice on 8th September 2023 to FirstPort - however FirstPort are claiming they did not receive any email, even though it was sent to two different departments within FirstPort. 

My solicitor as re-sent the email this morning, I have also then forwarded the email to them. I called FirstPort and confirmed that they had received the email so it should hopefully start to get resolved! 

Just like you stated eddddy, because my name isn't on the account and I have no account numbers or anything - it was very challenging to get to speak to someone who could actually help.

I have been told that I now have to wait for 7 business days to get a response to confirm they have everything they need to change the details over to my name. 

The good news is it hasn't been escalated to debt collectors yet! 

eddddy

zepplin_ said:

I called my solicitor, they sent the notice on 8th September 2023 to FirstPort - however FirstPort are claiming they did not receive any email, even though it was sent to two different departments within FirstPort. 

My solicitor as re-sent the email this morning, I have also then forwarded the email to them. I called FirstPort and confirmed that they had received the email so it should hopefully start to get resolved! 

If it turns out that late fees have been added to your account, ideally, you would want to establish who 'messed up'.

• If Firstport received the 8th September 2023 email from your solicitor, but didn't action it - they messed up, and should cancel any late fees

• If your solicitor is mistaken and no email was sent (or it was sent to the wrong place, etc) - then your solicitor messed up. So you probably have to pay the late fees, but you can try reclaiming them from your solicitor.

TBH, with such an important email, I would say it's good practice to say something like "Please reply confirming receipt of this email" - and if no confirmation comes back, chase it up.