Management Companies | Peverel OM

I bought a freehold house from Barrats in 1996 (13 years ago) there is very little common area where I live which needs any special attention by Solitaire, yet in 13 years I have seen the services charges go up from £40 a year to £269 - that is a staggering increase of 650%.

So if my salary was £20,000 pa in 1996, it would have to be £130,000 pa for me to be able to afford my Solitaire bills!

To my shock and amazement I discovered that freehold is not freehold at all if Solitaire are involved in managing anything on your estate. They dictate me my service charges and I must pay them unquestioningly.

Please sign the No.10 Downing Street Petition calling for the regulation of the unscrupulous uncontrolled property management industry.

Property management companies should be held accountable for poor service, shoddy workmanship and overcharging and this could be our chance!*

Therefore, if you are fed up with paying extortionate fees to Management Companies for little work, sign the petition today!*

To find the No 10 Downing Street petition website, search Google:

petitions number 10 flatownerhelp

Thank you to those of you that have already signed the petition, please ask your neighbours to sign it as well.

Fire Fox, I suggest you read my comments properly before you comment.

I live in a freehold house not a flat.

There is no common fire alarm, I have my own in my house I own my own roof, walls, windows, garden, car park.

We had a light bulb broken for 8 years, I attempted to contact Solitaire many times, but it is impossible to get through. Solitaire ignores everyone on the estate, they are awful. We are Solitaire's cash cows, we are easy money for them.

The rebuilding of 30-foot long, 5 foot high boundary wall cost residents almost as much as the rebuilding cost of my 2 bedroom terraced house. All this wall needed was some pointing, it did not require rebuilding.

I suggest you do search on Google: truth about Solitaire

You will see for yourself the complaints about Solitaire, Peverel and Consensus Group.

Peverel?? A bunch of c******

Any sensible governement would do something about them...

Cheers!

Lodger

Hi pb1612,

I am a director of a management company for a freehold estate. All of the directors of our companies are resident owners of the estate. Our annual fees are not dissimilar to yours - they are £200 per year, but I have researched all local estates with a similar set up (ie freehold estates with some areas in common) and the fees are typically £200 (ours is the lowest) through to £350. To be fair, I don't think your fees are high.

However, and this is the big issue, for you to have confidence in any management company you should have transparency in what they do and how they are spending your money. Our income from fees is around £10k per annum, of that, ballpark about £3k goes in professional fees (collecting money, estate inspections, chasing late payers and defaulters, checking out issues such as adoption of public areas and so forth). This can be cut by doing some of the work yourselves, but its really hard to act against your neighbours when they are defaulters, sometimes a professional company is a great aid and keeps the mess at arms length - we're not paid for the hassle of being a director. A further £2k goes on annual maintenance: generally fence repair, paving repair, clearing drains of debris and so forth, £2.5k goes on gardening and tree felling, £500 goes into "communication" - residents newsletters, holding AGMs and booking the facilities and so forth and £2k goes into a sinking fund as we've had a surveyor check our estate and that's the approximate amount we need to put aside so we don't need to go back to our residents to pay for forseeable long term repairs (retarmac of parking areas etc).

In my opinion, you should be able to get a similar breakdown for your estate and see what they are spending the money on. As I understand it, the way that leasehold flat management companies keep their estate's accounts are subject to new best practice rules from next year that will make such info readily available to everyone. I'm not clear on how this impacts on freehold estates, but we've made the decision to adopt the protocols as best practice. It is certainly something you should look at and if you aren't happy, get you and your neighbours to jump ship. You should also have a look at your deeds to see if there's any insight into the set up of the company and any protocols that they have failed to adopt.

Hope this helps.

I emailed and written to Solitaire many times but they ignored me completely.

I asked Solitaire for breakdown of charges but they ignored me and all the residents on my estate. Solitaire are awful, they exploit residents to the full and treat them with contempt.

Solitaire do very little on my estate, it has not been swept for months.

I am not alone to complain about Solitaire, I suggest you do a Google search.

Google search words: go petition solitaire

Google search words: allagents solitaire

Google search words: truth about solitaire