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!

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.

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

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 !

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

You say this would have affected your offer.

Therefore your offer needs to change!

Do not let them away with this - it is not a bargain and someone has lied to you already.

This happened to me with a property I was trying to buy earlier this year. I thought it was freehold, but there were management charges for things like the maintenance of the green spaces and lighting between the houses. It took so long to get the management company to send me the information on current and potential future charges (despite chasing them over and over) that our mortgage offer expired, and we ended up deciding to pull out and now are buying a straight freehold with no extra charges. We are buying a forever home and lost all confidence in having to deal with a terrible company that couldn’t even give us information within months of chasing!

I would absolutely not buy a property with a management fee. It could well go up exponentially, especially as venture capitalists are now in the game of buying them so I’ve read somewhere. It will be a real issue for you should you want to sell. Think very carefully OP it was omitted for a very good reason.

@Roadtrippingroundgreece guess why these people are moving….

you’re the one with the power here! THEY will lose their onward purchase… but they CAN pressure the developers to move completion date. They’re being pushed around, so are pushing you around and probably deliberately trying to conceal the management company

this has bad news written all over it.

walk.

You need to pull out. Find freehold. You’ll be saddled with fees forever. Trust your gut

If the vendors were part of the management company it would have been in their interest to make sure the details were readily available. The time lag is on them. A developer probably just wants completion as early as possible to aid cash flow and targets. A month from now is probably not realistic, if you have not yet instructed the searches and survey.

I would run a mile from a property like this. It is NOT freehold if there is a management company involved. OP hasn’t really explained clearly, but presumably this is a modern development where the houses are ‘freehold’ but there is a maintenance charge for communal gardens/parking etc. It will be a nightmare. You have no control over the maintenance charge increases or what repairs you will find yourself liable for, and inevitably there will be conflict.

I once owned a tiny freehold house but it was attached on one side to a bigger building divided into 4 flats. We shared the small car park in front of the properties. Whilst my house was freehold, my parking space was leasehold and I had to pay a maintenance fee. The management company were absolute cowboys, hiking the fee every year and also demanding I pay 1/5 of imaginary repairs, etc. It was an absolute ball ache.

I am planning to sell my current flat in a small block after 10 years of this sort of communal crap - endless negotiations/disagreements with others in the block about maintenance, etc, and constant annoyance and ineptitude from the management company, annual increases in the maintenance fee, etc. I will be buying a freehold house which will be entirely freehold, so I am not beholden to anyone else.

The arrangement the OP is talking about is a recipe for years of problems ahead. Don’t do it.

We live on a road with this exact situation. It's worked well for decades and our estate fees are low and it's run by the residents for the benefit of the residents. We uphold the few covenants that we have on the estate. Sure there's a couple of more annoying interfering types and we can never agree on some bits and bobs (gardening pf common parts seems to be a particular bone of contention) but it by and large works very well.
So don't worry too much until youve reviewed the pack and see what it says. It may be fine and you don't need to worry. In our case the estate is kept clean and no one can put in ugly extensions or paint their front door bright pink so the estate looks smart and uniform.
Of curse it may not be like that but YANBU to review the pack first and see what you think. And you are v sensible to not spend further money until you are happy

ETA: our houses are entirely freehold BTW. The only thing that is communal is the common parts ie the road to and around the houses. The freehold of the house have some restricted covenants which are enforced by the residents association (around appearance of properties and some other bits). We chose not to outsource to a separate management company but run it ourselves as its cheaper

Well, then they shouldn’t have taken two months to get you the pack, should they?

Just say no. What are they going to do? Re-list and expect to complete with a new buyer in less than a month? Not a chance.

Conveyancing will take what it takes. They need to re-negotiate with the developer. Usually it takes a 10% holding deposit, so they need to free up some funds until exchange. It’s nothing to do with you.

That said, if they are moving into a house that isn’t ready yet, the question I’d be asking is where are they moving out to when you complete and it’s not ready.

Our sellers rushed us along to exchange (which worked for us because we were applying for school places), but then we had a 3 month wait to complete. Their house STILL wasn’t ready, so they had to move into their second home (as you do 🙄). It’s lucky for us that they had a second home because they ended up not being able to complete on their new house for another 18 months!

This whole arrangement sounds complicated as hell though and that alone would make me inclined to walk away.

My parents live on a nice 1980s estate built on the grounds of an old country house, which was also converted into flats. The management company was mismanaged because it’s run by retired neighbours who have no idea what they are doing, they exposed themselves to legal liability by acting illegally in a maintenance matter, lost a case and went bankrupt. All 50+ properties on the estate are unsellable for the forseeable. I would tread carefully in your position.

Hi all,

Thanks for the advice. I spoke to my solicitor (who is great) and pushed back. The estate agent wasn’t very nice to me to be honest, but I stood my ground and lo and behold, the completion date has now been moved back to Christmas ‘which has never happened before’. Completion before Christmas is still a bit of a nightmare though and still unrealistic I think.

To those saying run a mile…this has definitely put me off to be honest. He was really rude on the phone and tried to blame me and my solicitor and it’s clear to me that this pressure is coming from the sellers (maybe the developers of the house they’re buying as well).

I had resigned myself to the management association as this is a good house (for now) in a popular area. I would need to make compromises elsewhere e.g location/price. To be fair to the management company, the road is well maintained (it’s a road of 10 houses) and they actually only took a month to turn the pack around from the date they were asked…it just the seller took a month to ask, hence why it took two in total.) However, given the lack of transparency, pressure and rudeness…coupled with my doubts about the company, I am wondering whether to walk away.

@newnamehereonceagain I had thought about reducing my offer, but didn’t have the guts. I will have a rethink and maybe do that.

Please do! You said yourself you wouldn’t have submitted as high an offer if you had known. At the very least I would reduce it by the present value of the annual payment for eg ten years. Take account of each payment potentially increasing.

By the way, if you proceed and your survey comes back with issues (windows need to be painted, evidence of a leak in the shower etc, regrouting needed) the normal thing would be to ask the surveyor to estimate how much these things would add up to and reduce your offer by that amount.

Keep asking yourself why they didn’t mention the annual fee situation at the outset.

A) the seller / sellers agent should have given you the info on added costs up front. They’re legally required to give you “material information” to allow you to make an informed about your offer upfront. So this is on them.

b) Management companies are notoriously slow at providing these packs. It’s not your fault - the seller would find themselves in this postition with any buyer.

dont let them push you into a decision before you w reviewed and asked questions.

I second this. I know people have nightmares but our set up works very sensibly and it’s very reasonable and means the estate is very well kept and a lovely place to live. The biggest contention here is also how to manage some of the scrubby areas (meant to be left for biodiversity but others want to turf 🙄)

so definitely worth taking time to review the pack as it might be absolutely fine

As for the estate agent being rude to you, OP, on the phone, well…. words fail me.

When people are under pressure or in a hurry they make mistakes or miss things.

House purchase at this point in the economic cycle is something to be taken very calmly and seriously.

Please please don’t fall for inappropriate behaviour verging on bullying.

If you don't like that it's apparently not freehold I would just withdraw. Don't be pushed into something you may regret.

This sounds a lot better than my previous situation. There were 47 houses/flats in total that shared the cost. I think the fact that there were so many and a mix of leasehold and freehold with the same management company maintaining the apartment buildings and the common ground, made the process more complicated and annoying for the freeholders. If there are a few freehold properties and they can self manage rather than use a useless company, this is a little easier.

However my experIence was so bad that I just wouldn’t go there again. I totally blame the company involved though and not the actual set up itself!

Charges on freehold estates are not looked on favourably by people though and do have bad press, and people like myself and others on this thread are put off by it so it may make the property hard to sell on later.