Fleecehold

BUDFORCE said:
Not all leases are bad. The ones where houses have been converted into flats, usually one up one down in a terraced house etc tend to be ok.

Usually they have very long leases and other than the main front door and very small entrance hall no real communal areas
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These houses are not leasehold.
 
mid_gen said:
Such an obvious scam and amazing it's legal. Privatise housing estates, what could go wrong!

Frankly anyone signing up to buy a property with one of these leaseholds where they are obliged to pay a charge that can be arbitrarily increased at any time is absolutely mental
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I can get that opinion, hindsight at all of that. I guess rose tinted spectacles of the right house, in the right area why would an arbitrary £100 a year for upkeep of the surrounds be a put off. I guess the advice at the time from the solicitor should have been more meaningful. I have no regrets, we love our home and where we live, just being fleeced on an annual basis is a bit of a kicker with a concern of how far does it go. I can't see it going away any time soon, especially with Gove making the decisions, but also if these area's are adopted by the council, as they should be seen as additional costs.
 
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It's mad how all this comes about for something that should be so simple. Developer builds houses. Council check / approves. Council adopts. Houses sold. Developer makes money. Council has increased council tax. Council has more responsibility. Status quo.

But no. Lets go make a legal mine field. And apparently a lot of pension funds are involved in the long term so it's going to be tough to unpick.
 
jeffk said:
I used to live in a block where the leaseholders exercised their right to manage. Unfortunately, the only leaseholders who had the time and energy to get involved with the running of the block were a handful of awful buy-to-let landlords who each owned multiple flats in the block. They went too far the other way and let the block fall into complete disrepair, and then had a major falling out with each other. While it was fun watching the fireworks (they really were a bunch of greedy, pompous ****heads), I’d vote against self-management if I ever ended up in that situation again.
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Yeah I think self management is often a terrible idea. What’s needed, and what RTM is intended for, is a management company that works for the leaseholders rather than a freeholder who is either disinterested or worse has a vested interest in high fees (kickback from the agent or holds a financial interest in them).
 
yes but if you look at the management cost in the bill he presented (the only arbitrary cost) 2.5K - would that really go away.

the obstacle to the adoption of sewerage - perhaps it's non-compliancy needs to be uncovered.
 
I have this on my current freehold property and it's a bit of a pain.

Initially the development was handled by a management company called Chamonix. They seemed OK, fees stayed about the same each year.

Then they got bought out by First Port, who are greedy. Fees have since gone up. The itemised bill they send out is largely fees to them, they include a £1k per year charge to the estate for "General Maintenance" but what this actually means is anyone's guess.

Paying £325 this year, so it's creeping up. Originally was more like £225.
 
I'm not sure if some are confusing leasehold and fleecehold.

Leasehold - where you own the property but not the land its on
Fleecehold - where you pay maintenance fees for the areas in the estate (grass cutting, playpark maintenance, lighting maintenance etc) i.e. nothing to do with a leasehold on the land where your property sits on.

Now you can probably get a mix of this i.e. a leasehold flat with a fleecehold arrangement for the "amenity areas" but thats still 2 seperate things


My brother lives on a fleecehold estate. TBH, they do a far better job of maintaining the amenity areas than the council would and costs about £220/year to do it so he's happy as its looked after well.
 
Scort said:
We avoided new builds like the Plague because these things seem to be everywhere now; and are mostly unchecked/unregulated (to me knowledge) - so there's scope for these fees to spiral
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Some mortgage companies are now asking for evidence that the terms of the contract mean that the fees can't increase disproportionately.

I suppose the fees could be 'ok' (and no better than ok) if it was a small estate, say 30 houses. On a 500+ mega-estate, absolutely no chance!
 
The issue is that they can just charge you for anything they feel like charging you for, and doubt they have to evidence this to anyone.

I don't mind paying a fair proportion for fair work, but they can just put in random lines for billing items and you can't really question any of it easily.

I think the right solution is that management companies should only be allowed to maintain an estate for a period of time after build, council should be forced to adopt after say a decade has passed since build was complete.

I don't pay less council tax here, same as many others in the same scenario.
 
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FYI.. maintenance companies as well usually send you a bill of £300 quid or so for a "maintenance pack" if you want to sell your house, which covers them to print out the contract agreement... i kid you not. I can understand and agree with maintenance companies as the council dont adopt new build estates, but they are not regulated and the service is usually extremely poor and gives them a license to print money
 
Stu999 said:
I suppose the fees could be 'ok' (and no better than ok) if it was a small estate, say 30 houses. On a 500+ mega-estate, absolutely no chance!
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I would have thought it better in a larger estate given the costs are spread over more households. Obviously this depends on the size of the factored areas.

200sols said:
Does he get a reduced council tax because of it?
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Nope... Its a fair point TBH.

I should add that most of the roads are adopted by the council however none of the grassed/playpark etc areas are adopted and wont be so these are not council maintained.

What the fairer thing would be for the factoring company to show the council the costs and then the pro-rated charge per household removed from their CT bill. However the council may then enforce their own "timetable" of maintenance meaning it doesnt get maintained as much
 
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Pipe & Slippers said:
I don't think that's a good idea - Councils' have enough on their plate
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But they charge you full council tax, this current status quo gives them all the benefits of fully charging you whilst not doing the usual work to maintain the roads/green spaces.

If they don't want this, then people on private estates shouldn't pay full council tax.

Current system is council having their cake and eating it.
 
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