Pressure from house sellers

[Roadtrippingroundgreece]

For context, I put an offer on a house bank holiday weekend August. I then found out that it had an estate management and rent charge attached and naturally wanted to review the pack before committing to searches (this definitely would have affected my offer).

The pack only came back last week and my solicitor hasn’t had a chance to review it yet. I am now being asked to complete by first week of December or the purchase will fall through. Apparently the sellers onward chain are developers and putting pressure on them.

Am I being slow/unreasonable or is this a bit unreasonable? I didn’t expect it to have turned around in three months to be honest!

How has it taken 2 months to obtain the pack? That is ridiculous and someone has taken their off the ball. If you haven’t done anything at all since making your offer, there is no way you’re going to complete by the first week of December. You have to get your survey done, and there is a big backlog for surveyors in many parts of the country, and then there are all the searches, questionnaire for the sellers, and all the back and forth that entails after all that, depending on what comes back.

Were you just sitting back for 2 months and not asking the solicitor or EA what was happening?

Hello - it only came to light when they sent across forms like the land registry, fittings and contents etc. that there even was an estate management and that’s only because I stuck it in chatGPT - this was beginning of October. It’s then taken them a month to send over the pack.

I’ve had my mortgage offer and engaged the solicitor within the first month, but obviously have been waiting to review the pack. I was annoyed as obviously that would have affected my offer as it does increase the costs firstly and also I wanted a freehold for a reason.

my main ask though is whether it’s reasonable for me to review the pack prior to undertaking searches.

Yanbu to review it first, you should review absolutely everything. but Yabu to have messed the sellers around by seemingly not chasing things up before now.

I’ll be blunt you’ve absolutely no chance of completing by the 1st week of December, probably not even the last week of December and with the apparent hidden charges with the property, I’d just back out now.

@LuigiGhostDog to be clear, I have chased across the last month - including multiple phone calls with the estate agent. The sellers weren’t even aware they needed to provide a pack, only once I called their estate agent to ask.

In terms of completing, a more realistic timeline I assumed was end of December to move in January. I am flexible. The sellers it seemed had put an offer in on a house with developers before having things fully in order themselves - I would have thought they would have things like the management pack sorted as they are all part of the management company (it is a very small road).

Don’t be pushed around, this is a well known tactic from those above in the chain.

Is the property leasehold or freehold? Will the charges rise by an unspecified percentage each year? Be interesting to look at previous years charges.

I can see both sides here but think three months without a big chain on either side is reasonable. If I was the seller, I wouldn’t think you were taking things seriously given you haven’t instigated searches. I would be giving you a deadline as well.

Again....can see both sides.

But the seller has the right to keep the house on the market until they've found a buyer that they feel is fully committed, which is something that they should have done.

This, I had similar experience with my sale and purchase earlier this year.
You 100pc need to know about the additional maintenance /rent charges before you proceed as would any other buyer

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.

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.

As PinkElephant said, it is a freehold with a management company. The catch is that the management company is run by the people on the road…I.e the sellers are part of it. The director of the management company is their neighbour and they attend monthly meetings, so I am a bit confused as to why/how it wasn’t mentioned.

I was hoping to buy a complete freehold but I am happy with it in principle - it’s just that they were very blasé about it (oh it’s just x amount a year) but also the rent charge does mean other conditions.

I am a committed buyer, but I’ve saved hard for this property and want to do my due diligence. As mentioned before, this would have affected my offer.

The sellers have said that they will take it off the market and go back out next spring if it falls through, so maybe I just wait.

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

@Goodadvice1980 no - not mentioned until I asked my solicitor as I put the land registry through chat gpt. I also rang the estate agent to ask prior to engaging a solicitor and they said no - however, they have now updated the right move listing to reflect the charge. It definitely wasn’t on there before though and as I said, I got the pack through last week.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Thanks for all the replies - it’s appreciated. I do like the house and the area a lot and I have got it for a good price - but yes the management company was a spanner in the works. @PinkElephants356 i would be keen to hear the cons of going with a property like this.

@PomPomSugar good to hear that you think this is a relatively normal timeline - I’m not sure why the sellers didn’t think to obtain the pack prior to putting it on the market.

@Flakey99 that is very interesting. Perhaps I can put it to the estate agent. I’m really on the fence, I don’t want to rush however the market is fairly stagnant and there isn’t a lot of movement. That said, I could rent for a year, save more money and look to go again when I find the right property. If they put it back on in Spring, I could always offer again.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 🚩