Conveyancing Legal advice? Slight update

[Reereef]

Hi all, we bought and moved into our house a year ago. It is a new(ish) build and we are the second owners inheriting management fees. We had the final bill and paid everything, as far as we knew.

Today I have had this email out of the blue from our solicitor.

“We have received a letter from the managing agents solicitors that they require a further fee for supplying us with a Certificate to comply with the restriction on the title. I am afraid we need this to be able to register you as the owners of the property.

The fee required is £240, please can you send this sum to us urgently so that we can submit our application to register the property.”

Is this right? It’s not an earth moving amount, but it seems so out of nowhere?

Any advice appreciated!

[MariaLynda]

Hi

My DH works in coveyancing.

He has said to me 'reading from your post are you saying that you haven't been registered as owners of the property for the last 12 months you have lived there? If that is the case, I would speak to the lawyer that acted for you when you bought, and find out if this is correct. Fees for managing agents like this are a genuine thing, but this should have been collected before you actually completed, and your lawyer would of got that certificate, and then registered you at the land registry shortly after you completed.

It could be correct, but check in with the lawyer that acted for you.'

Hope that helps. x

[Reereef]

Hi MariaLynda!

Thank you so much.
Yes, it does look that way. We had issues with the management company billing the previous occupants and not us from July - Dec and then we got it sorted (I thought) but we didn’t hear off them due to coronavirus. Then this came out of the blue.
The solicitor we got the message from was the solicitor we used to buy our house. We had our final bill and paid it etc, so this was just a bit of a shock.

I’ve emailed her and asked her to please clarify what has happened, so fingers crossed she can explain why a year on, we are dealing with this.

Thank you again for asking your husbands advice. It’s very reassuring!

[MariaLynda]

Hiya, no worries.

If it is your lawyer that has asked you for it, it is probably correct. It is something they should have picked up on before, so a bit of an error on their part, and they should have told you sooner. Just make sure when you do pay it, ask for the copy of the land registry title as soon as they get it, just for your reassurance.

Hope you get it sorted x

[Reereef]

Thank you so much. I will do that. Xx

[Reunion]

Originally Posted by Reereef

Hi all, we bought and moved into our house a year ago. It is a new(ish) build and we are the second owners inheriting management fees. We had the final bill and paid everything, as far as we knew.

Today I have had this email out of the blue from our solicitor.

“We have received a letter from the managing agents solicitors that they require a further fee for supplying us with a Certificate to comply with the restriction on the title. I am afraid we need this to be able to register you as the owners of the property.

The fee required is £240, please can you send this sum to us urgently so that we can submit our application to register the property.”

Is this right? It’s not an earth moving amount, but it seems so out of nowhere?

Any advice appreciated!

See more...

We received something similar recently related to an Investment Property we bought a couple of years back. We requested a copy of the documentation from our solicitor because we had a funny feeling they were wrong... and it turned out they had collected the fee from us (it was on our completion statement) but paid it over to the wrong managing agent.
Worth getting them to double check before you pay anything.

[Reereef]

Thank you Reunion, I will definitely ask them to check!

[vhm672]

Usually the fees for registration of change of ownership and connected management company issues are known at completion but not always. Where they aren’t known it should have been flagged by your solicitor

What is totally clear is it shouldn’t have taken a year and any issues should have been notified to you.

[Reereef]

Update:

So I asked for a bit more information and I’m none the wiser. Even more confused if it’s possible and unsure why it’s all suddenly so urgent. Latest response;

‘Hi

I am very sorry about this.

We paid the notice fee due to the management company, however it appears that an additional fee is due to their solicitors as their fees for providing us with the Certificate. I am due to review the file as no mention on this was made in the management pack as far as I am aware.

However the problem we have is that without this certificate we cannot register you as the owners of the property. I have been ‘arguing’ with them for sometime regarding this but we are not progressing and the matter is now urgent.

I understand this is the last thing you want to hear with the current climate. Please can you confirm your instructions’

In the meantime I f you understand this and could shed some light I’d be so grateful. I’m waiting on a phone call from them and my parents solicitor, to see what they make of it. (Also to find out how my solicitor expects me to pay them as there seems to be an assumption that after a year of not hearing from them I should just know).

Thank you again for all your help and advice!

[GoldenAvalanche]

We are buying a new build, it doesn’t have a management company or fees, but we do have an additional £240 to pay the developer related to registering the property (not the land registry fee as I think that’s £270 for being new) it was a cost we weren’t expecting and comes from the developer’s solicitors, suspiciously similar amount? I can’t find the email that mentioned it right now, but it had very little detail, I think it may have said for a certificate actually.