Service fees are insane.

itsthelittlethings

Some people don’t have a chance but to buy leasehold at the cheaper end of the market.

eddddy

itsthelittlethings said:

Some people don’t have a chance but to buy leasehold at the cheaper end of the market.

And some people like the idea of living in a city apartment with a residents' gym, a residents' pool, manicured gardens and a concierge - and accept that they'll have to pay a sizeable service charge to cover it all.

Or maybe they just like the idea of living in an 'average' apartment / flat, and are happy to pay an 'average' service charge in order to live there.

itsthelittlethings

eddddy said:

itsthelittlethings said:

Some people don’t have a chance but to buy leasehold at the cheaper end of the market.

And some people like the idea of living in a city apartment with a residents' gym, a residents' pool, manicured gardens and a concierge - and accept that they'll have to pay a sizeable service charge to cover it all.

Or maybe they just like the idea of living in an 'average' apartment / flat, and are happy to pay an 'average' service charge in order to live there.

I pay £160/ a month, it mounts up over the year but I have little choice, I have none of the things you mention. My point was in response to the person saying they would never buy a leasehold property.

RedFraggle

We're share of freehold and pay £80 a month. I deliberately avoided lifts,  gyms, concierge, large gardens, wooden windows, heated communal areas. Also as a director of the management company I have some input into what gets done. I'm happy with that. 

 Where I rented in London my LLs service charge was £3000 a month.

ExEstateAgent

I don't think the OP should consider a leasehold property. 

The downside of leasehold is that you are usually paying more than the maintenance costs because you have to pay for the management company, assuming there is one. 

The flipside of that is not having to worry about dealing with day to day maintenance, getting trades in, estimates etc. etc. 

Some people don't want to worry about gardening, or painting outside, dealing with a blocked drain or whatever might be needed. 

To avoid high charges look for buildings that are already in good order, avoid high rise, lifts, gyms, concierge, large gardens etc., anything that might add to the costs basically. 

Bigphil1474

OP, I think your maths is a little out. If it's for sale at £130k now, and it was £65k 17 years ago, then it has doubled in value over that time. If you kept it another 20 years, then it could be worth nearer £300k on the same trajectory, although nothing is guaranteed. Don't forget the value of having somewhere to live. You couldn't put that £130k into an alternative investment for a greater return (unless you wanted to be homeless). If you make a profit after living there for 20 years, then you've basically lived there for free?

EssexHebridean

Chief_of_Staffy said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

We paid more than that for 'fountain and plaza maintenance', which apparently cost £60k per year total. In reality the figure would have been nearer £2k. Nice, but neither plaza nor fountain were visible from our windows, being 100 yards away surrounded by very expensive apartments and accessed by means of a palatial archway. Oddly enough, the gardens outside our window, which everybody had to walk through to exit or enter the development on foot, were paid for only by us residents in the immediate vicinity.

Again - just for balance...

Your lease would have said you have to pay a percentage share of maintenance of the fountain, plaza, palatial archway and gardens.

And you should have read the lease before buying it. If you didn't want to pay for those things, you could have walked away and bought somewhere else - without a requirement to pay to maintain a fountain, plaza, palatial archway and gardens.

That's not actually true. The lease normally states general expenditure like 'maintenance of communal areas'. There's no granularity as to which areas are paid for and which are not are not the on lease. I believe you can request the past year's expenditure but that's not something that's routinely provided, or something that solicitor would ever tell you.

You not only can, but should be provided with previous years finalised service charge statements, and any half decent solicitor will ensure that these are provided. Perhaps your choice of conveyancer was not the greatest. Conveyancing factory, to save a few £, perhaps? 

As for "communal areas" - they are shown marked on the plan attached to the Lease. If they are not clearly identified, then as eddddy says, the Lease would be defective. Whether you can see a particular area from your windows is entirely irrelevant - I presume that the roof wasn't visible either, but you presumably wouldn't dispute paying for a share of the maintenance for that?

More generally, rising insurance costs have driven service charges up massively in the past few years - we got our of our leasehold property just in time to avoid the worst of it. 

poseidon1

RedFraggle said:

We're share of freehold and pay £80 a month. I deliberately avoided lifts,  gyms, concierge, large gardens, wooden windows, heated communal areas. Also as a director of the management company I have some input into what gets done. I'm happy with that. 

 Where I rented in London my LLs service charge was £3000 a month.

Also own share of freehold of converted house ( 4 units). Our annual outgoings are buildings insurance which I organise. My share  this year around £400.

However we did have a large renovation programme in 2017 which included roof and chimney replacement, repointing brickwork ( last done over 100 years ago), refurbishing windows, stonework etc ( property built 1856).

My quarter share of that project was £25,000, but this renovation had been planned for over the prior 10 years as part of buying out the original Freeholder who wanted to do the works on the cheap.

I would certainly buy into a similar sized share of freehold flat again, with this measure of absolute control of outgoings.

Would never, ever contemplate a large modern block  with service charges completely out of your control, and with a mixed bag of co lessees the majority of whom would be unknown to you, not to mention the usual quota of absentee BTL flat owners with their 'revolving door' of tenants.