Pressure from house sellers

Having escaped from this situation... please please don't get involved..run from anything that's not fully yours. Don't even thing of anything if it's Abit of grounds leasehold. It's hell and I mean it. Look for something else. This house isn't worth it.

I bought a flat with a similar set up. Our management company lasted a few months as we kept arguing over priorities and how to approach things. None of us had the time and expertise to follow all the different legal requirements involved.

So we hired a management company and it costs thousands with annual uncapped increases. I’d never have bought it if I knew it would be like this.

The minute someone put pressure on me in a property deal, I would seriously think twice about ‘why’. I would also question who lied to whom about the exact fundamental nature of the legal title. This is an absolute basic. If it were the seller, bad news. If the EA, ditto. It isn’t the sort of thing people make mistakes about.

It’s clear why they are pressurising you here. You would be well advised to reduce your offer as you are not getting what you were told you were buying, PLUS there are costs, which will only increase annually, associated with that.

You need to obtain chapter and verse on the charges. You need to know the extent to which they can increase, what they cover, what % you are to pay, see previous year’s accounts, understand the increasing regulatory environment for such places, see the budgets for the years to come. You are entitled to all this and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise or say the deal will be lost and rubbish like that.

Don’t fall in love with this property and get pushed around or make compromises on what you want. Buyers have strength currently.

Look up home owners associations in America. If yours is that sort of thing then run a mile.

Super confused.

The pack arrived last week but they want you to complete in December?
‘was it the negotiation that took that time? 2 months is super long… but then if you now have what you want, just go for it?

Pull out and buy a freehold property. This information should have been provided upfront by the estate agent. You are likely going to face unknown costs. My mother went through this avoid avoid avoid !

This. We were pressured so much by the seller of our new house (top of the chain)

Constant threats id "if it isnt this date im pulling out" and to be honest complete horse shit as THEIR solicitor was holding everything up!

This is a huge purchase - probably the biggest tof your life. You need to push back that you obviously want everything checked before finalising.

Also what they fail to realise is it takes solicitors months to get things through. Even if you say yes today there is no guarantee for that date

I would pull out. I've moved from leasehold to freehold and wouldn't touch anything with a management company with a barge pole again. Like you say, you want freehold to avoid all this.

Op I would be incredibly suspicious the buyers did not disclose the management charges

we had one at our last house, and it was a question asked by the estate agent when listing the property

they can be an utter pita you and your solicitor will want to go through with a fine tooth comb
Don’t be pressured to rush which is another 🚩

YANBU, 2 years ago i sold a house in under 3 months including the Christmas shutdown right at the beginning.

This was considered by everyone involved to be very quick.

It was freehold and empty (previously my home and had then been rented out), so no chain at all. Buyer was a first time buyer. I had owned it for 17 years, so bought fairly recently in conveyancing terms. I had every bit of paperwork scanned and uploaded and ready to go from the start and was already chasing a couple of bits of documentation for grant fitted solar panels and gas boiler before the property even went STC. Obviously as a rental it was all up to date with electrical, gas and smoke alarm safety certificates.

Even with all that it was still almost 3 months.

The vendors in your case are being ridiculous and shouldn't have marketed it if these were their expectations.

I don’t want to put you off buying a house if you really like it. This is an unexpected cost but there can be lots of unexpected costs when buying a house (especially an older one) in that things can need replacing, fixing etc. and you may not be that aware of them before buying. So if you really love it this should not be a reason to not buy it.

However, I will give my honest experience and the reason why I would never buy a property with this set up again. Of course the set up where you are buying may be different and much better especially if it is all self managed by directors and there is no other company involved.

This is my experience;

We were on a road with a mix of freehold and leasehold properties that had small parking and green areas that were shared and managed by an estate management company. We had a board of directors (residents) who instructed a management company to manage these areas.

The first point to note is that freeholders have very few rights compared to leaseholders. This includes the right to complain. This is changing with current legislation but there is a long way to go.

Our annual charges were around £220 per year, they would typically grow around £20 per year. Accounts were sent each year which showed how little was spent on maintenance and how much was allocated to accounting, admin, management fee etc. Part of the amount was for a reserve fund, if they did not have enough in the reserve fund for maintenance, they would ask for more regardless of whether you as a resident felt the maintenance was required or not. This was once an additional £400. Leaseholders had a say in the consultation process for this, freeholders did not. So essentially we were required to pay this amount and our views on the amount were not considered.

I wrote a formal complaint to the company which was never answered. Their communication was really poor and I was lied to on multiple occasions. Again this is the specific company and may not be the case where you are moving to.

I escalated my complaint to the property ombudsman but as a freeholder they could not help me.

My neighbour had never been issued with invoices for payment whereas I had. When they moved the company finally twigged that the property should have been paying so they tried to pursue the new residents for the amount owed by the previous (5 years worth).

If you decide to not pay or delay payment they are in their rights to take legal action against you. I was sent a letter from a solicitor for funds I had already paid, but the company had not accounted for it properly. It would have been the other residents on the road that would ultimately be paying for those unnecessary solicitor fees because this can be taken out of reserve funds for the estate.

When I eventually moved from the property, I was charged £240 plus VAT for a management pack to sell the property. It delayed my house sale because the company dragged their feet so much.

Like I say legislation is improving but at the moment as a freeholder you are required to pay a proportion of the management charges which is an uncapped amount which increases each year, you have no rights to complain or be involved in consultations and it is harder to sell the house on.

In my view the only pro would be that you individually do not need to manage certain areas of the road say if you park on those areas, if you don’t use those areas for parking or access then I really can’t think of a pro just cons.

Sorry this is my experience, it may not be like this where you are buying but I would be on my guard if I were you.

conveyancing secretary here - the sellers can’t apply for the pack until they’ve agreed a sale as the pack information only remains relevant for so long. They usual charge around £250 plus vat for most packs which is ridiculous.

you’ll have to pay a notice fee on the management company as well once it’s completed which no doubt will be another hundred or so pounds. The solicitor will let you know the cost once reviewed.

also rent charges are common in the north of England.

What do you mean by an estate and rent charge? How much is it and is a one off or a life time thing? I'd run a mile from this, it's all very underhand.

They won't sell it to anyone else in that time frame

Tell them plainly that the delay is their own fault and you will get back to them as soon as you and your solicitor have read the pack

If they want to start again next year let them. Don't be rushed

I would be taking a very long hard look at this. Ignore the sellers, unless you are desperate to move but if I was tying myself into ongoing charges, nope, I would be taking my time.

FWIW, when I bought my first house, the sellers were desperate to move to a new build property and the developers were keen to push the whole thing through quickly as they needed the money.

I made it clear that I wasn’t in a hurry so the developers bypassed the sellers and offered me 4% of the purchase price as a cash incentive to speed up the process. My solicitor did all the necessary paperwork and I used the money to add some home improvements to the house.

In other words, you might have some bargaining power here.

Haha! Conveyancer here, two months for a management pack is quite good going! I’ve had some take four months even with paying an expedition fee!

That’s really naughty of them! If the buyers continue to apply pressure point out the omission of important information. Cheeky feckers.

When I sold the house with the estate charge I was very clear to any prospective purchasers about it because I didn’t want buyers to feel like they’d been misled by me and I certainly didn’t want them to pull out half way through the process because they had found out something which was a deal breaker.

It is a small thing for a house you really like and it’s a relatively small cost compared to the cost of a house. But I will be honest I had no end of problems with it to the point that I would never buy a house with that set up again.

Was any of this mentioned in the estate agents blurb? The buyers would’ve signed off the details.

I guarantee it was the estate management company who are responsible for this delay. It’s a very simple pack to put together as well, that they would have charged extra to put together (about £240 or there abouts).

You have made the right call to ask for the pack first because you need to know what you are getting yourself into and it was quite bad that you were not informed of this before you made an offer, the fact the sellers didn’t disclose this earlier has also delayed things.

From experience (I’ve owned a freehold with these charges) I would be wary! These companies are quite unregulated, there is no cap on increases to annual fees and they are notoriously difficult to deal with.

Surely if you made the offer based on freehold and now know it's leasehold with management charges, your offer must change. Vendor knows this and are expecting you to pull out IMO.