Tenant information requested by freehold managing agents

I am suprised Annette Stone of GML hasn't commented. They charge these fees

I am sure Annette Stone of GML will know all about these charges as they charge them to landlords and ask for the details.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "25/09/2013 - 16:30":

I have had exactly the same issue and i thought the fees were exorbitant and told them in far more words.
First i refused point blank to even pay.
Then after reading the court case i paid the £40 and quoted from the case.
They did try to threaten me with all sorts but i simply told them to refer to the quoted email.
At this time i have not had any comeback.

Annette posted earlier this week that she will be offline until Monday due to a Jewish holy period

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "26/09/2013 - 16:41":

I have had exactly the same. My solicitor advised me (iF my lease says there is a "reasonable fee due for administration to do with sub-letting" - which it does), that a fee of £25 would be more than reasonable as all they have to do is write the tenant's name down and do some photocopying. If you write to the Freeholder yourself - usually "GR Portfolios Ltd" - which is owned by Simarc anyway, and has the same address, you can argue you have served notice of subletting on the freeholder yourself (use registered post- Simarc are gifted in the letter losing department!!).

Their other trick, was to receive the ground rent cheques, then hold them for six months and not bank them, and then charge for arrears, interest for the arrears, administration fees for the arrears and letter fees to tell me about the arrears. Luckily they seem to have stopped that kind of nonsense.... I have two leasehold flats with them, and tried to gather the owners of the other eight ion the block to purchase the freehold from Simarc, but unfortunately, they couldn't be bothered. - I ended up doing a lot of of unthanked legwork, so gave up too. When it comes to selling - these will be the first to go.

Reply to the comment left by "Ian Simpson" at "26/09/2013 - 17:30":

Yes i would be glad to get shut of this place.
I will never buy another apartment because of the issues i have had with charges for this that and the other which seem to have no legal limit.
Anyone interested in buying an apartment 🙂

Regarding these fees from management companies to leaseholders who let their properties out on ASTs I think £25 or £30 could be deemed reasonable. The freeholder after all is responsible for the building overall and knowing who is living there could be important but NOT their financial status.

HOWEVER I think many managing agents take leaseholders for a complete ride as they charge extortionate amounts for sometimes unnecessary work and more often than not get a kickback from the contractor as well as taking a 10% fee for managing the project.

Most of my properties are ex-council and so far I have had one request from a council who is both freeholder and managing agent to give details of current tenants plus a fee which I think was £30 - not at home so cannot immediately check on my computer. I think we will see it creeping in - everyone loves bureaucracy if they can make a buck out of it.

We have just had a change of mismanaging agents now to PBM - "Premier Block Management" - Lots of bumf introducing themselves and so on, and I thought grimly : I await the first bill!! There was an account surplus of just under £3000 handed over from the previous agents , but this was nowhere to be seen accounted for on the new demands, even though the accompanying letter stated specifically that any carried forward balance would be on the demands. I sent everything back, with the relevant figures highlighted, and a copy of the previous accounts, amount in credit highlighted - predictably they have now gone quiet. Suspect they will just send a demand again, - upon which I will re-send all the same informatiuon - (highlighted!) - in fact it's already prepared and jusat needs posting. Meanwhile the garden is now unkempt and there are leaves in the hallway - that must be the "added value" ..!!!

Three interesting threads in this and I would like to thank John Curtis for inviting my response. Very flattering!!!

Firstly, most of the firms who charge License Fees are the big freeholders who bought the buildings at the development stage and basically wrote the leases so they included everything that could provide them with an income stream. Sometimes the amount that can be charged is specified, sometimes it is not and if it is not then £40 is what I think an LVT would consider reasonable. If this charge is not provided for in the lease then it cannot be charged. Two years ago I formed an rtm for a building where a Licence to Let fee of £100 plus VAT had been charged for several years to each buy to let lessee. I argued the lessees' case and got the lot back.

Secondly, John is very kind to mention what gml do but he is wrong to suggest that it is a Licence to Let fee.

We have a registration scheme for tenants' and their contact details. This is so we know who is living in a building for security and safety reasons. There is no charge for this. We do offer a scheme to buy to let lessees whereby for a cost of £75 plus VAT per tenancy we will deal with any problems which arise up to the point where eviction is necessary. Around 50% of our buy to let landlords sign up to this scheme but it is not compulsory and any lessee who does not sign up will be charged on a time/cost basis for any work we have to do to deal with a tenant who is causing nuisance.

Buy to let lessees are generally very aware of the fact that the remit of a block managing agent is to manage the communal areas of a building and if the managing agent has to spent hours dealing with a problem caused by their tenant they appreciate that they have to pay for the time that is spent. I have not so far found any buy to let landlord who considers this unreasonable.

If you could just consider that in the past two years off the top of my head I can recall dealing with cannabis factories in flats (2), one brothel, prostitutes working alone, a gang "safe house" which was not very safe for the girl who was found half dead in the car park and numerous dangerous dogs who suddenly took up residence in buildings where the leases prohibited animals we are not talking about isolated incidents.

The final thread seem to be how awful managing agents are. Most of the problems I think are with the big managing agents where there is a continued turnover of staff who have no personal contact with the lessees of the buildings they manage. They run around with a clipboard doing "inspections" but have no idea what they are looking at or what to do with what they see and they are often under pressure to fee-build via things like License Fees. Most of our business comes from buildings fed up with this impersonal sort of service who are prepared to pay a fair fee for day to day management, who appreciate that dealing with a major refurbishment under Section 20 regulations involves a huge amount of extra work which warrants a fee and who appreciate knowing that if they have a problem there is someone to speak to. We are not perfect; no one is and trust me there are some really, really difficult lessees out there - it's not all one sided

Reply to the comment left by "Annette Stone" at "28/09/2013 - 23:29":

Re paragraph 4.
The £75 seems reasonable, if gml regard a tenant that stays for say 12 years as being chargeable as if it is one tenancy.
(Please can you confirm this.)

Charging one person for another person's conduct / mistakes seems unreasonable.
I can think of many reasons why this takes place (eg charging the person who is more likely to actually pay, also other organisations doing similar).
However the only reasonable thing to do, is charge the person causing the problem.

Separately, how is it decided if say one resident is causing a problem as opposed to another resident?
Paragraph 4 could for example give rise to a situation where you have to decide between charging the LL of a tenant or not being able to charge an owner occupier, each of whom is claiming nuisance on the part of the other.