Brady Solicitors’ service charge tips have received a bit of attention on twitter recently. Catch up with our posts here…
We have been sharing our top service charge tips with fellow tweeters throughout February and have been told how useful they’ve been. A search on twitter for #servicechargetips will take you to all of our posts, but for those of you who may not be on twitter, we didn’t want you to miss out so we thought we’d share with you here….
- Don’t let obscurities in your RMC articles hamper service charge recovery
- Don’t forget to include the Summary of Rights document when issuing service charge demands
- Understanding WHY leaseholders withhold payment can help you reduce service charge arrears
- Ensure you are open & transparent with all service charge costs in case leaseholders question reasonableness
- Know the terms of your lease inside out for a solid defence if it’s ever questioned!
- Unhappy leaseholders? Ensure you have a complaints procedure in place to allow any issues to be voiced and addressed
- Unable to locate a leaseholder with outstanding service charge arrears? A little detective work is just needed
- Made a mistake on a service charge demand? All may not be lost!
- Ensure demands go to the right place – create a system for updating leaseholder changes of details
- Chasing arrears? If you demand & accept payments prior to start of proceedings you can lose the right to forfeit a lease
- Keep records of service charge costs to refer back to if lessees question reasonableness of costs
- Consider email as an additional channel for issuing service charge demands to your leaseholders
- Establish open communication with leaseholders & lenders for swift payment of arrears
- Leaseholder unable to pay service charge arrears? Offer payment by instalments option – put the agreement in writing though!
Do you have any service charge tips?
If you have a few service charge tips of your own, tell us in an email or tweet us @bradysolicitors and we’ll help you share.
