Annual property maintenance

[Porcupine32]

Hello, hoping people can shed some
light on how much it actually costs to maintain a property?

I own a one bed leasehold in London, only 9 flats and a lift, very healthy sink fund close to £90k, private road with allocated parking. Our service charge has increased to £3.3k this year, we were under offer and our buyer pulled out once this increase came through (it’s up £500 from last year, mostly building’s insurance and inflation on general repairs and maintenance) in my opinion a very well maintained building, cheap to run as newish and quite unique architecture.

The feedback from viewers is that it’s the charges that put them off but we know that other flats the same size in our area that are older Victorian conversions with lower charges sell for a lot more than our asking price some £50-100k. We have many friends that have bought older properties and spend a great amount on the upkeep and maintenance of them. So I guess my ask is how much do people typically spend on building maintenance a year including insurance? As leasehold has such bad press (some warranted) for the up fronts costs but there doesn’t seem to be much about the actual cost of period properties

When we bought ours I was told spend £2k a year on maintenance. Ours is a gentrifying area and I guess it has had less spent on it in the last 50 years than in an area where people traditionally were more wealthy and had a bit to spend on them. We’ve been here 10 years and whilst there’s nothing vital left and we’ve addressed almost everything in our survey I still
think we’ve got about £20k of work to get it where we want it.

@ACynicalDad is yours a flat as well?

No, 3 bed 1901 terrace. SE London