Freehold service charge

[Jotribiani]

We’re looking at getting a miller home but they’re is a service charge. The house is freehold buts it’s to ‘maintain the private road’. Please someone who has bought a new build help me out with this, if we wanted to sell in 5/10 years is this going to make it impossible? Do you need their permission before doing anything to your own house? Can I plant a bloody tree out from if I wanted???

It’s not unusual for new estates to have a service charge for maintaining common grounds and unadopted estate roads. There will also be a number of covenants designed to maintain the uniformity of the estate (designed to be to the benefit of the developer whilst the building works are ongoing and they want to sell houses).

Get your solicitor to check through everything carefully and if there is a mechanism for increases in the service charge. Find out who the management company is and see if there is a resident’s association as well.

I have lived on an estate where the roads were unadopted (which we knew about) an the common grounds were not adopted (which we didn’t). It resulted in one householder suing everyone else for repairs to common ground affecting his property - not a fun situation at all.

I live on estate where there is a service charge. Every household owns one £1 share of the common grounds, we can be on the management committee that sets the charge and decides on the maintenance.
Mine is £245 per year we have beautiful grounds that are maintained really well and i think it is worth the money.