Home 'OWNERSHIP'

[TrixieTrishaw]

Advice from a very old woman. Do not buy any property that comes with ANY fees at all that you have to pay to a third party, save for council tax, after the day of the completion of your purchase. If you do, you will be signing yourself up to be a cash cow year after year and the feels will escalate year after year and there will be very little you can do about it, particularly if the property is sold as 'freehold' with estate fees, rent charge etc. because this sort of property known as fleecehold, because you will be fleeced forever because, you do will not have any access to leasehold law, for what that is worth,at least it is a mechanism for some sort of redress.

I’d never buy a leasehold property. Don’t need those extra charges.

My freehold flat managed by affinity Sutton now called Clarion who are an utter joke.
(They are a house association And basically act with the same efficiency as the council - an utter shambles of a company)

They did F-all and anything done was done to a dire standard HOWEVER for £400pa service + ground rent I didnt care.

Then there started "entering into long term contracts to improve cost efficiencies" resulting in my service charge moving to circa £3k within the space of 5 years.
My flat was amazing and we really wanted to keep it as a Pied a Terre in central London but the writing was on the wall.

Retrospectively I am delighted to have got rid of it.