Estate management company - outrageous registration fees near completion

brutal_deluxe

Hi!

So it is almost time for exchange and completion on a freehold property I'm buying that's subject to estate management fees. My conveyancer has been less than transparent about what's going on and its been in excess of 7 months waiting due to a change in management companies during this time.

Suddenly my conveyancer has slapped a bunch of vague and arbitrary management related fees to my draft financial statement...

Notice Fee - Charge 120.00

Notice Fee - Assignment 120.00

Issue Deed of Covenant 216.00

Certificate of Compliance 216.00

Application for Membership 57.00 

OUR PROFESSIONAL FEES

Shared Ownership/Equity Fee 450.00

Freeholds with Management Company or Rent Charge 250.00

Deed of Covenant Fee (Centrick LTD) 215.00

Subsequent Notice of Transfer and/or Charge Fee 50.00

TOTAL: 1694.00

How the heck can is cost nearly 2 grand to register a new owner??

The management company has already made several admin errors including issuing a leasehold certificate and not freehold. 

Can someone tell me if these charges sound genuine to you?? I could just about accept 8 or 900 as proportinate but this just seems ridiculous. What do I do as I want to complete ASAP

Thanks again in advance

BD

theartfullodger

That's the deal on offer.  Take it or walk away.

What research did you do about this before the problem loomed?

Best wishes and good luck 

JM68

A lot of those sound like they are uplifts to standard (fixed price?) conveyancing quote, which often uses an assumption of a standard freehold property, with no 'complications', as the base pricing point. Have you checked the terms of your contract/quote? You may find a lot of these things are specified there e.g. if share of freehold its plus £450, if there is a freehold with mgmt co/rent charge then its plus £250, if you need a deed its plus ££ etc.  Some of them may also be actual fees (i.e disbursements needed to be paid to Land registry for additional filings etc.).

JM68

This is an example of the pricing structure for a local solicitor to us -

https://www.suttonmattocks.co.uk/pricing-transparency/residential-sale-purchase-and-remortgage-fees

Tiglet2

brutal_deluxe said:

Notice Fee - Charge 120.00

Notice Fee - Assignment 120.00

Issue Deed of Covenant 216.00

Certificate of Compliance 216.00

Application for Membership 57.00 

OUR PROFESSIONAL FEES

Shared Ownership/Equity Fee 450.00

Freeholds with Management Company or Rent Charge 250.00

Deed of Covenant Fee (Centrick LTD) 215.00

Subsequent Notice of Transfer and/or Charge Fee 50.00

TOTAL: 1694.00

The fees in bold are set by the Management Company and are the fees they charge to change the paperwork from the current owner to you.   These fees are normally set out in either the Management Pack or in the LPE1.  Nothing you can challenge here - that's what the Management Company charges and you either accept or pull out.  When you sell in the future, you won't pay these fees, but you will have to pay for a Management Pack and presumably the seller did do this.  There would most definitely have been a delay in providing this information if the Management Company changed during the course of your transaction.

The Notice fee - Charge is for advising the Management Company of a new lender for the property (i.e. if you weren't getting a mortgage, this wouldn't apply).

The Notice fee - Assignment is for the Management Company to note the change of ownership to you.

Issue Deed of Covenant - the Management Company will send this to you via your Solicitor, which you have to sign that you agree to comply with the covenants/clauses in the lease.

Issue Deed of Compliance - the Management Company will send this to you via your Solicitor, which you have to sign that you agree to comply with their terms and conditions.

The other fees - Our Professional Fees - are the additional fees your Solicitor is charging you for doing the extra work involved in dealing with the various additional parts of purchasing this leasehold property.  If you look at your original quote, these items will probably not be quoted, as the Solicitor wouldn't have known about them when the conveyancing first began months(?) ago.

You could probably challenge some of the solicitor fees, for example, it seems a bit steep to charge £215 just to review the Deed of Covenant and send it you for signature, but solicitors can charge around £500 per hour of work if it is additional work on top of the quote, so maybe they can justify it.  

As JM68 says above, you were probably quoted a basic fee structure based on a limited amount of information available at the start.