Hi, been a while since I posted, but was hoping someone could give me some advice on behalf of my brother.

He has to pay a yearly ground rent on the property he owns.

He has only been there about a year.

He received an email from the Estate agency Braemar Estates last November introducing themselves and asking for the first year's payment of £200. Which he paid.

He then received at the beginning of February a final demand for 2018 payment and an additional £150.

He emailed them and advised he had not received any request for payment and there must be a misunderstanding, and happy to pay the £200.

He sent them another email asking them to respond, the only response he has had is another letter from the Estate agency saying that further charges have been made and and he his account has been sent to Brethertons Solicitor, he has also received the letter now from Brethertons saying he owes over £650!

Can I please get some advice how he can best respond to this?

Surely these charges cannot be enforced?

Thank guys

Kate

Thread moved to Residential and Commercial lettings/Freehold issues Forum...please continue to post here to your thread.

Regards

Andy

Thank you Andy

Can anyone please help me with this?

Just pay the £200 for 2018...keep proof of payment and the 2017 payment.

Take a read of the following thread in particular the post made by Site Team Andydd at the end of the thread.

https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?485551-Arrears-in-ground-rent&p=5104545#post5104545.

Regards

Andy

Hi thanks Andy,

I am going to copy the letter that we sent to the Solicitors and the response we have had. Would really appreciate some further advice on this.

***** LETTER TO BRETHERTONS *******

Dear sir/madam,

I refer to your letter dated 1st March 2018 in regards to the non-payment of ground rent for the property ***. Please be advised that the payment of £200 has been made to your client via bank transfer on the 13th March 2018.

In relation to the outstanding charges for your client’s administration fees, and the referral to you and the administration cost, I do not acknowledge them and will not be paying them. The first request for the ground rent payment for 2018 was a final demand on the 29th January 2018 which also included administration fees. I wrote (emailed) to your client on two separate occasions asking them to contact me and to check their records as there had obviously been an error. I have had no communication from them in response to my emails. I would also like to point out that it is only in November 2017 that I received request for payment for the ground rent for 2017 and I paid this following that request (which was the first time your client had contacted me to introduce themselves). I have records of all communication with your client and a record of all the financial transactions.

I would like to bring to your attention that your client is in breach of Section 166 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 on numerous levels. As a result I will not be paying the the further fees that have been added as I have not even received an initial letter in a prescribed form which your client is legally required to do.

A copy of this letter will be emailed to your client for their reference.

Yours faithfully,

***** REPONSE FROM BRETHERTONS ****

Dear Mr ,

I refer to the above matter and further to previous correspondence.

I am advised by my client that they are in receipt of a payment in the sum of £200.00 from you. This has been allocated to your account and I attach an up to date statement for your records.

Whilst I appreciate your frustrations, it is the responsibility of the leaseholder to ensure payment of charges are made on time and in accordance to the terms set out within your lease. Your conveyancing solicitor should have made you aware at the point of purchase of all charges, their due dates, your obligations to pay and the consequences of default. Failure to receive a demand is not a valid dispute for late payment.

My client has served all demands and subsequent reminder letters via Royal Mail first class post to *****, which is the correspondence address held on record by my client. Post has not been returned and is therefore deemed as served. If you reside at an alternative address and updated my client in writing prior to the instruction of this firm, please provide evidence of the same by return an I will ask my client to investigate the same.

As such, administration fees levied to your account for the credit control processes followed remain due, together with the interest accrued and legal costs incurred by this firm. The balance remaining for payment is in the sum of £483.02 and is broken down as follows:

Arrears: £300.00 (see statement attached)

Interest: £0.02

Legal Costs: £180.00

Disbursements: £3.00

Total Balance as at 20-03-2018: £483.02

Payment must be made to Brethertons LLP and can be made by credit or debit card or by bank transfer. Our account details are as follows;

Lloyds TSB Plc

14 Church Street

Rugby

CV21 3PL

Account Number: 00918958

Sort Code: 30-97-17

Reference Number:

It is important that you quote our reference number when making payment by bank transfer in order to ensure your payment is allocated correctly. Should you wish to make payment by credit or debit card, please contact this office on 01295 661515 quoting the above reference number.

Please note, should the balance remain unpaid, this matter will be passed to the County Court issuing team for their consideration. This may result in proceedings being issued against you in the County Court for the remaining balance with a view to obtaining a County Court Judgment. This will significantly increase the legal costs incurred to date and will have a detrimental affect on your ability to obtain future credit.

***********

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Although he has been in the properly for a year now the Estate agents only introduced themselves in November 2017 with request for the first payment, which was paid immediately. The only communication he has received since was a final arrears letter.

He has never received a letter or schedule of payments from any party so had no idea when payment was due and assumed he would receive a letter when it was next due.

Thank you in advance,

Kate

What legal costs ? Writing to you to ask for made up charges because of the failure of the Client ?

It is the responsibility of the leaseholder to ensure payment of charges are made on time.....assuming that they have been requested..not for you to remind their Client.

Hi Andy,

So if we are responding to this letter the Solicitor sent what do you suggest our defence to their come back would be?

Thanks, Kate

if you paid when the correct demand was issued then there is nothing to say, let them do their worst. they are just trying it on and know the law but hope you dont. writing now will only confirm their suspicions and they will ask you to pay for some more unicorn food

Response- see you in Court?

Hi Andy,

So if we are responding to this letter the Solicitor sent what do you suggest our defence to their come back would be?

Thanks, Kate

Dont respond

Hi guys, some further advice on this will be good.

We haven't heard anything further yet from the Solicitors, but before he paid the rent he did get a letter from the mortgage company.

It seems the Solicitors had been in touch with them and in turn they contacted him.

He has spoken to the mortgage company to advise the rent is paid and it's the charges he is disputing.

He is worried as it appears the charges maybe added to his mortgage as they are saying he is in breach of his lease. I will attach a copy of the letter the mortgage company have sent. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Letter from mortgage company

natwest letter.pdf

Too small to read must be uploaded as a PDF file Kate.

this is a normal tactic, they threaten to take the flat back leaving the mortgage co with no asset and the mortgage provider then pays up the disputed sum.

You will need to show chapter and verse to the mortgage co to make sure they dont pay up and warn them that if they do you (he ) will be after them if they add the money to his account.

Often they will still pay up and write the money off which will make Brethertons and others happy anyway

Thanks for this, we are just composing a couple of letters,

one been to the mortgage company to advise that the rent has been paid and that the charges are in dispute and not to pay them.

The second letter is back to the Solicitors to attempt to get them to clear the charges.

Whilst my brother was writing emails to them which they did not respond to the Estate agency were adding charges for late payment.

If they had responded to my brothers enquiries then the fees would not have accrued.

Do the estate agency have the right to add whatever charges they want to the balance?

He has never signed anything with them and even in their introduction letter never gave details of when the payments were due.

The difficulty is there is still an outstanding balance for the charges on his grounds rent account and he is looking to sell the property soon.

As always your help is greatly appreciated.

Kate

letter now pdf

Did you get anywhere with this ?. According to post #5, the solicitor is claiming the valid demands were sent but to a different address..is there some confusion over the addresses ?

We could do with seeing letters from them with the amounts owing.

Also to add..there is no breach (and therefore mortgage company cant get involved) unless amount owing is over £350..note this £350 must be just ground rent or service charges..it cant be topped up by "default charges" - legal charges/admin charges that than push it over the £350 limit.

See here > S167 (3) - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/15/part/2/chapter/5/crossheading/forfeiture-of-leases-of-dwellings

Kate

https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?487930-Brethertons-charging-%A3180-per-letter!&p=5127882#post5127882