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Ripped of and paying for the pleasure of it.


NuBeginnings
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For those of you that own lease hold property in the U.K.

Here is a tale of caution.

For a number of years I had been battling with the management company shoddy work and service charges never seemed to be correct.

I took the bull by the horns and challenged the service charges in the LVT.

The freeholders solicitors sent over all the accounts after going over the accounts they showed a 4k over charge in a six year period just on my service charges. I had been paying to manage his flats and to maintain them!!!!!!

So the 4k was returned but it cost me over 2k in legal fees to get that back, could not get the fees back as the LVT don't have a provision to rule on costs. Matter settled just before the hearing.

In my mind it was fraud, but I have been advised its just poor accountancy.

The freeholder is work more than 50million !

Leasehold law desperately needs to change.

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I contract to management companies in the UK and frequently report work of very low standard, at one company they simple choose the lowest estimate every time often this results in the residents paying twice to have cheap shoddy work replaced and it is often harder to undo bad work before re-doing properly thus the cost is proportionally higher. My opinion of property managers is very overpaid estate agency type people. I am looking to try and get a job there next year as self employment up against these cheap bodgers is tougher than it was a couple of years back. I may not know so much about the leaseholders acts (yet) but on building knowledge alone I could wipe the floor with the lot of them.  A reasonably large job two years back I didn't get paid for for months as the property manager didn't allocate the money for the project and spent the budget again on something else.

Biggest problem I see is the builders of these places can self certify their work and that work would never have passed the building control officer or building regs. Gratefully I am very busy putting things right afterwards but against other companies cheap quotes it is getting tougher.

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Leasehold law sucks for the most part.

I have been trying to force this particular freeholder via his managing agents to manage the building properly. Its not huge, small mantion block 6 flats above two shops so not complicated.

This year I have been pushing for the communal halls ti be refurbished.

The response was the freeholder will only stretch to a freshen up, but if you want a better job pay for it your self !
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What happens to your maintenance fees? some poorly maintained blocks I have worked on were not paying realistic maintenance fees so over the long term the whole block became very run down. If there isn't sufficient will the other residents stump up a bit to cover the work, whilst you are at it talk about buying the freehold to protect their investments then choose your own management team.

I upset someone on one of the bigger developments, they informed me I was using the wrong paint. I was using the toughest "Endurance" paint from Dulux, (20x tougher and scrubbable) they used supermat which as soon as it's dry shows every finger mark, thus a job for life painting walls in the development. Turned out he was a relative of the freeholders!

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Usually if there is not enough funds then by law the owner has to get three quotes and send everybody copies and an indication as to their share. If people don't pay up that's the problem of the management company i.e. they can't divide the persons amount who has not paid amongst the other tenants and ask them to cough up.

I would get some proper advice, Consumer Advice Bureau for example.

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It was the first property I brought when I was 20 so its rather sentilmental ! But putting that to the side it represents an excellent rental investment generating nearly 3.5k a month.

The only issue is the freeholder, but I am hopeful he may sell of one of his flats this year as its been empty for 6 months and he has just renovated it.

The managing agent has indicated he may sell if he does the % ownership slips out of his fat little fingers and I shall take pleasure in ripping the building from his clutches via leasehold enfranchisement.
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