Friday, May 28th, 2010
Michael Wear of Bond Pearce writes that the RICS intends to tighten up on the proceedures relating to service charges, when there is a change of agent. Often the final reconciliation of the service charge accounts at the date of hand over is not fully completed because the property is no longer the responsibility of the transferring agent and there may be fears about receiving payment for this work.
Read the full article here
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
The Estates Gazette published a summary of some LBS MBA students’ research into service charges and how they are the cause of friction between landlord, tenant and property managers. Property Services sponsored the reserach and a summary of the work is on their website.
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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
A recent article in Property Week written by Christopher Hedley, a director of IPD, about Occupiers and Management highlighted the general dissatisfaction of tenants with how their managing agents and landlords deal with service charges.
The majority felt that the large increases in service charge costs could not be justified and that control and communication of costs by managing agents was poor - so much so that fewer than 10% of occupiers felt they were getting value for money.
The tenants also expressed major concerns over exceptional expenditure and improvement costs. At best these create unpredictable variations in service charges year on year and at worst may be outside the scope of recoverable service charge expenditure.