Managing agents have professional expertise, experience, and qualifications in property management. They understand legal requirements, financial management, maintenance procedures, and dispute resolution. Self-managed blocks of flats, on the other hand, rely on the collective knowledge and skills of the leaseholders, which may vary significantly.
The cost of owning or living in certain types of properties - often those covered by rental agreements, such as apartments or apartments in apartment buildings - includes ground rent and additional costs. These service charge are common in several countries, such as the United Kingdom.
A number of factors, including your unique situation, the terms of your lease or rental agreement, and the applicable rules and regulations in your community, may affect your legal duty to pay a property service charge. Property service costs are associated with leasehold properties, which include apartments or flats within a building. Their purpose is to cover the cost of common area upkeep and services, such as landscaping, repairs, and cleaning.
If you have ever thought that finding the right property manager is a bit hit-and-miss, then the good news is on the way. A new block management code of practice is being developed that we hope will improve the service that leaseholders can expect to get from their managing agent.
We discussed the practical implications of the new Fire Safety Act for managing agents and leaseholders in our blog post. Today, we are examining service charges, which are yet another crucial component of the law.
To ensure their properties are kept in good shape and to extend their life, landlords often referred to as the freeholder or competent landlords have to provide various services, these are funded by collecting service charges. Service charges are levied on the leaseholders sometimes also called tenants (tenant in this context means a tenant who holds a long leasehold interest under a lease) and fund the service charges thereby enabling landlords to recoup the cost of providing the services required to run a block of flats or a private housing estate: services such as cleaning, gardening, insurance, etc…. Service charges are the lifeline of an apartment block. Yet, poor management of service charges is at the core of most leaseholder-landlord disputes. It is also one of the biggest pain points regarding block management in the UK. When service charges are not efficiently managed, it can cause untold problems to your property as cash flow gets choked, and there is little money available for critical repairs and maintenance. When the problem persists, the property loses its charm and value.
On Monday we blogged about the help we can offer small blocks with our virtual property management tool, Blockcare 100. This provides online guidance and support to enable you to run your building yourself. However, for those managing blocks who prefer not to collect service charge payments or do their own accounting, we’ve created Blockcare 300.
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