Many management companies register a restriction on your title at the Land Registry to prevent a sale of your property being registered without their consent. There are often considerable fees and delays involved with obtaining their consent, a headache you really do not need during what is already stressful time.
A notable case in this area is that of Vanessa Lennie v Ground Rents (Regisport) Limited which was determined in 2015. In this case, the leasehold register of title for the property the applicant had purchased contained a restriction that prevented her ownership from being registered at the Land Registry until the landlord (or their managing agents) had issued a certificate of compliance to confirm the terms of the lease had been complied with. The relevant terms of the lease that required compliance, were that on completion of the purchase, the applicant would enter into a deed of covenant with the landlord to confirm they would continue to comply with the terms of the lease. In addition, the applicant’s solicitors would serve a notice of assignment and charge on the landlord or agents to notify them of the new owner of the property and that there was a mortgage charged to the property. The lease provided that for receipting these notices and issuing the compliance certificate, the landlord would charge a reasonable fee of ‘not less than £25 + VAT.’ However, upon receipt of the notices and deed of covenant, the landlord’s agent wrote to the applicant’s solicitors demanding £110 plus VAT per the notice, £125 plus VAT for the deed of covenant and £120 plus VAT as the “consent” fee. To avoid further delays with completing the registration at the Land Registry and upsetting the mortgage lender, the applicant paid what was demanded but expressly stated that the payment was without prejudice to her rights to later challenge the fees. Following the completion of the registration of the applicant’s ownership, her solicitors subsequently filed a claim for the reasonableness of the fees to be assessed by the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal.
Judge Margaret Wilson, on behalf of the Tribunal, concluded that the Landlord’s agent had in fact carried out very little work as the vendor’s solicitors had drafted the deed of covenant and the notices were prepared by the applicant’s solicitors. Therefore the fees the agents were claiming were simply for receipting both of these documents (i.e stamping and returning them by post) and for producing the certificate of compliance which was a single-sided document which could not have taken more than a few minutes to prepare. The tribunal concluded that a reasonable fee for this work would be a maximum of £100 plus VAT and ordered the landlord to refund the surplus to the applicant.
The lesson to be learnt here is, just because you receive a bill for something, doesn’t mean you should just pay it. Mandeville will never charge excessive fees for this kind of service and will co-operate promptly and efficiently with your solicitor to ensure there are no delays to your sale. Contact us today to see how we can help.
