Q. My developments freehold was recently sold and having met the new freeholder at our last residents meeting, there were suggestions that possibly they are thinking of synchronising everything in respect to the service charge and ground rent collection. Do you think this is a good idea, or do you think its better left with the existing parties?
A. To be perfectly honest, as long as the new freeholder is experienced enough in this field and has the correct systems and staff available to carry out the work load I can only see merging everything together as an advantage to the leaseholders. Purely from an agents respect, when it comes to selling property on leasehold developments so much time is wasted trying to collect information from the various companies with respect to service charge accounts and managing agent’s packs as well as ground rent receipts and copies of the buildings insurance. If these were all available from one contact it would save vast amounts of wasted time, and would surely assist in a speedier transaction all round. I’m sure as a lessee you would also benefit in that one call to one office would answer any query, rather that having to contact several different offices.