In our bi-weekly series, readers can email in with any questions about property to be answered by our expert, Jonathan Rolande. Jonathan is a professional property-buyer and housing commentator who has bought and sold over 1,000 properties. If you have a question for him, email us at money@theipaper.com.
Question: I have a one-bed retirement property I inherited which has a £9,000 service charge. I don’t want to keep it because it’s costing money, I can’t rent it out for a cost that covers the charge, and I also can’t sell it because of the high service charge. How can I shift it? I tried to auction it at a vastly reduced price from what it was bought for with no success. I’m happy to essentially give it away at this stage.
Answer: The harsh reality is that some retirement flats with very high service charges become effectively unsaleable at conventional prices. If you’ve already tried the open market and auction, you may need to stop thinking about maximising value and focus instead on offloading the liability.
Shorts
The maintenance fee you mention – £9,000 – is incredibly high, around three times more than I would expect to see.
