Leasehold company making up charges!!

sportyjd

Hi Forum group -first post newbie!

Please can you advise what we can do - We are moving out of our leasehold property and the lease-holding company is charging us £800 in unpaid interest that we had no idea about from March 2004!!

We have had statements twice a year and have always paid our fees. We are shocked to find out we owe £800 in interest and do not believe this charge should apply to our account.

When I challenged them about it (e.g. I've never seen the charges on any correspondence or statements) they replied "our software doesn't display them until you have moved out". How can a company charge it's customers interest if it doesn't inform the customer there is an amount owed? We are now saddled with a bill for £800 that according to the cowboys is "interest occurred".

The lease-holding company is Hamilton King Ltd. It wouldn't surprise me if you've heard of them!

Do you think we should pay the charges even though we haven't received any correspondence relating to interest accrued on our account? Please advise as we have 28 days to pay a huge amount!!

Thank you in advance

Jo

martinman3

From the LEASE website http://www.lease-advice.org/ under 'service charges'

"Normally the lease will provide for the service charge to be demanded in advance, but occasions will arise when the demands are issued after completion of the works or provision of the service. In these cases a statutory time limit applies: the landlord must issue the demand within 18 months of his incurring the cost. If the demand is provided later than this, the landlord cannot recover the costs at all, unless a notice is served during the 18 months stating that costs have been incurred and that the tenant will be required to contribute to them by payment of a service charge."

If the £800 charge dates from 2004 and has not been notified to you previously then you don't need to pay it.

Contact LEASE to confirm this.

Richard_Webster

The freeholder may not be able to compel you to pay the arrears, but your buyer will not be a happy bunny when he finds them saying that the £800 is owed. His solicitor will say something like this:

a) regardless of whether or not it is legally due we do not want to be stuck with the argument and
b) that's interesting, you've obviously got an unreasonable Landlord, I'll need to warn my clients about this and they may decide not to proceed...

So unless you are prepared to go to court/LVT for some kind of declaration that the amount is not due, you may find that it is the buyer's attitude that is the problem, and you end up paying up so that it doesn't appear there is any dispute with the freeholder, in order for there to be no obstacles to the sale of the property.