Below are those questions most frequently asked by residents. If you cannot find the answer to your question please contact us.
Once you have received your service charge invoice (sometimes called a ‘demand’), you will need to pay the Balance on your account by the due date.
The simplest way to pay is by making a payment on your bank’s website. Please pay into the account details listed on your invoice.
You will also find other ways to pay listed on your invoice.
The amount you need to pay at any given time is called the ‘Balance’.
Your Balance may be more – or less – than your recent invoice because the Balance will consider any outstanding charges that you haven’t paid, as well as any credits that you have received from a previous period.
You can see your current Balance at any time by logging into the app/portal, Places. When we send you a new invoice, it will typically be sent with a Statement which shows your Balance on that date.
If you are having difficulty paying your service charge, please contact our Service Charge team as soon as possible by email: service.charge@encoreestates.co.uk. We will always try to find a way of assisting you with your payment arrangements and may be able to offer an alternative method of payment.
Please do not ignore any reminder letters. For unpaid service charges, we will be instructed by our client (your Management Company/Freeholder/Head Lessor) to refer the account to external solicitors for debt recovery. If this happens, you will incur additional fees, and all communication will have to be with and via the solicitors until your account is cleared.
We would prefer this didn’t happen, so please contact us before the specified date to make alternative arrangements. If you don’t make contact until after the solicitors have been engaged, it will be too late as costs will have been incurred.
A Direct Debit will typically be collected on or around the 1st of the month (or shortly afterwards if that falls on a weekend).
If a new charge is issued after the 15th of the month, instead of being collected on/around the 1st of the coming month in under 2 weeks time, it will be collected on/around the 1st of the following month. This is to ensure sufficient notice of the upcoming payment is provided.
Yes. All owners are required to pay for the estate’s upkeep, regardless of whether their property is empty.
The obligation to pay the service charge lies with the owner of the property.
When we take over management from a previous managing agent, the circumstances will be unique every time. Typically, the outgoing agent will take 3 months to reconcile the accounts and provide us with the handover of financial information.
During this period, in the absence of historical financial information, we may need to contact you regarding the service charge to ensure the estate has funds to operate successfully. Rest assured, you will not pay more than your correct share as a result of a transition of management, even if it takes a few months for historical accounts to be reconciled.
The costs of running and maintaining your estate and its communal areas are paid for by each property owner’s contribution to the Service Charge (sometimes known as a Maintenance Charge or Estate Charge).
The service charge is set on a ‘not for profit’ basis, at a level required to manage and maintain the estate properly and to ensure its safety and amenity value.
Each property owner is legally obliged to pay the service charge – payment is not optional. Refusal or inability to pay service charges will result in a shortage of funds to meet the estate’s obligations. Therefore, it is important that owners pay their service charges when required.
Council Tax is collected by the local authority and used to fund many other local community facilities such as the police service, the fire service, education and refuse collection as well as infrastructure such as roads. There is no rebate against Council Tax as a result of paying a Service Charge.
The service charge is estimated at the beginning of the year based on anticipated costs for items such as utilities, maintenance and insurance.
The service charge budget may have different ‘schedules’ to reflect different areas of the development that only certain owners will contribute towards.
At the start of the financial year, we will send you your estimated annual service charge. Your estimate will be based on your percentage of the budget schedules that you contribute towards.
Your percentage (referred to as your ‘apportionment’) is typically based on the size of your property or an equal share – your lease/transfer will specify the method. Together, all of the properties in the estate will add up to 100%, ensuring the total budget is recovered – not more or less.
At the end of the financial year, a reconciliation will take place to compare the amount that was actually spent versus the amount that was collected from owners in advance (‘actual vs budget’). A ‘balancing adjustment’ will then be made to deal with any shortfall or surplus.
At the end of the financial year an accountant will produce an end of year statement (annual accounts), which is independently verified and shows how much was actually spent.
If more money was spent than originally collected (a deficit), the balance will be recovered from owners via a ‘balancing charge’. If less money was spent than estimated (a surplus), typically the balance will be returned to owners as a credit to off-set a future charge.
Different arrangements may apply, depending on the specific lease/transfer at your estate.
The service charge is always paid in advance so there is a pot of money from which the invoices received by the estate can be paid when they are due.
This would typically include invoices for insurance, utilities and service providers who carry out maintenance, such as cleaners, gardeners and technicians. If there are insufficient funds, it means contractors cannot be paid and they will cease to provide services.
The service charge money you pay is deposited into your estate’s unique, interest-bearing, client bank account. This is completely separate from the managing agent’s bank accounts. Indeed, your payments aren’t made to the managing agent, they are made to your estate. As the managing agent, we manage your estate’s bank account on its behalf.
Your estate’s bank account cannot be overdrawn. As such, we cannot place Works Orders with contractors on your estate’s behalf unless there are sufficient funds
Your service charge goes towards the upkeep and maintenance of communal land, infrastructure, buildings and amenities that form part of your estate. For a full breakdown, you can refer to the service charge budget information that we send you.
You can submit changes via the app/portal if you have created an account. Alternatively, you can complete the form on our website.
You can choose for correspondence to be sent to either one postal address or one email address. Please note that we do always need to be informed of your up-to-date postal address at all times as there will be some things that we are legally obliged to serve by post.
When a transfer of equity occurs, we need to ensure the assignment/transfer clauses of the lease/transfer are satisfied. Please ask the solicitors to contact us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk to advise what is intended for the Title and with a copy of the Title and Lease/Transfer. We will then respond with the requirements and draft paperwork where applicable.
Please kindly email a copy of the document evidencing your change of name – e.g. a marriage certificate or deed poll – to legal@epmgroup.co.uk. Please quote your customer reference in all correspondence to ensure we can locate your property. If you have multiple properties managed by us, please ensure that you note all of the properties where changes are required.
First and foremost, please accept our sincere condolences. We can certainly get this updated for you. When you are ready to, please email us a copy of the death certificate and we will make the updates to the account. If the deceased was the sole owner of the property and their estate is subject to probate, there will be some additional things that are required. We are aware that in these circumstances a solicitor is usually instructed, and we often find that the preferred course of action is for us to send correspondence via the solicitors until such time the property has transferred. If this would be helpful to you, please ask the solicitors to contact us directly on legal@epmgroup.co.uk with a copy of the death certificate and an instruction to send all correspondence care of their offices. We can then liaise with them directly regarding probate, and any transfer/assent requirements to be satisfied under the terms of the lease/transfer.
No problem, we can certainly provide this. If you are the seller, please arrange for your solicitors to email us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk to request the pack. To make this as efficient as possible, the solicitor should attach a copy of the property Title and Lease/Transfer, quote your customer reference number and property address, and confirm that they would like an invoice to order a sales pack. We will then open a file and raise an invoice in the solicitor’s name. Payment must be made by way of a bank transfer, and the reference on the invoice must be quoted on the payment. Although the invoice will be in the solicitor’s name, we can accept payment from the vendors directly if this is more convenient.
The pack will be emailed to the vendor’s (i.e. seller’s) solicitors within 5-10 working days from receipt of cleared funds.
The cost of the pack will vary depending on your type of property. A fixed fee quote can be provided upon request. Whether you will need to obtain a pack is dictated by the purchaser and we would encourage you to discuss this with your solicitor. A sales pack is required in most cases in our experience.
The management sales pack is designed to reply to all of the enquiries raised in an LPE1/FME1, which is a Law Society template of standard management enquiries. The pack contains information and documents regarding the developer/ freeholder, accounting information including reserve fund and individual statements of account/account status. It also contains information regarding the estate, insurances, management company (if applicable) and details surrounding the assignment and what is required to complete the transfer. Each pack is tailored to the Estate and customised to your individual property. Due to the ever-changing nature of the estates and requirement for current information, the pack is created each time a pack is requested.
The service charge will be payable in advance in the usual way. This is to ensure that the estate has the necessary funds to continue to run efficiently. It is not uncommon for a vendor (seller) to have paid for a period that goes beyond their completion date. This should be taken into account by the solicitors by way of making a calculation of the apportionments/adjustment at the time of completion. If you are currently paying your service charge by way of direct debit or standing order, it is your responsibility to cancel this promptly on completion, as we are not always able to refund service charge payments made in error.
Usually this is because we are waiting on information from the purchaser’s solicitors. The best thing you can do is contact your solicitors and ask them to request that the purchaser’s solicitors carry out the formal requirements of the completion process as quickly as possible. This will enable the name on the service charge account to be changed to the new owner; it can’t be changed until this formal process has been concluded.
Unfortunately, if the purchaser’s solicitors don’t make contact promptly or they provide incomplete information, this process can take some months to be resolved.
In the meantime, you can ask your solicitors to email us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk to confirm that the sale has completed and to provide the contact details of the case handler acting for the purchasers. You will still receive correspondence from us during this interim period (as your name will still appear on the account), however your account will not be subject to the usual debt recovery procedures for non-payment. During this period, we would ask that you pass copies of correspondence to your solicitors as we will not be in direct contact with the purchasers.
Usually, you will be required to provide a statement of account and a copy of the buildings insurance, which we can provide on request where available. Not everyone instructs a solicitor when re-mortgaging, but the lender almost certainly will. The lender’s solicitor is likely to have a number of queries. Please arrange for them to email us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk to raise any questions. To make this as efficient as possible, the solicitor should attach a copy of the property Title and Lease/Transfer, quote the customer reference number and the property address.
A Notice of Charge is almost always required under the terms of the lease/transfer. It is essentially a formal notification of the details of the charge. This type of clause is drafted into the lease/transfer to protect the estate and all of the owners. It means that we have the relevant details to contact a lender should the need arise.
A Certificate of Compliance is required where there is a restriction on your Title that needs to be overcome. If there is a restriction on your Title it is because it is required to be there by your lease/transfer, and it usually links to the need for notice. The most common type of restriction will need a certificate to confirm that the notice has been served correctly and that the beneficiary of the restriction consents to the registration at the Land Registry. Your solicitor should be able to answer any further queries you have on this directly.
Please contact your solicitors in the first instance and ask them for proof that they have provided us with all the required completion paperwork. By way of explanation, when a sale completes, there will be requirements that need to be satisfied by the purchaser’s solicitors before an account can be assigned. The requirements vary from property to property but usually include things like the service of Notice, Deeds of Covenant, transferring Shares / applying for Membership and settlement of outstanding service charges and fees. In our experience this can take anywhere from a couple of weeks, to several months to receive in its entirety. We are always keen to assign properties as quickly as possible and will follow up proactively where have the ability to do so, however please note that it is ultimately the responsibility of the purchaser’s to provide all of the information.
No problem, please contact service.charge@encoreestates.co.uk with any queries and someone will be able to help you.
Please kindly submit your request via the app/portal or our website here.
Please kindly submit your request via the app/portal or our website here.
Please kindly submit your request via the app/portal or our website here.
It is the landlord who has the authority to agree the lease extension in the first instance. If you’re not sure who your landlord is, a good indicator is to see who sends your ground rent invoices.
If we act for the landlord, please contact us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk with your customer reference number, the property address and a copy of your lease and title so we can progress your query. Please note that your landlord may wish to take legal advice and instruct a surveyor, and any professional fees (including our own) will need to be met by you, the leaseholder. Please be assured we will not incur costs without consulting with you or your representative first.
If your property is leasehold it will be the landlord who can grant the variation, although they may need the input of other parties as well, depending on the effect of the variation.
If your property is freehold, the party who can grant the variation will be dictated by your transfer document. If we act for the party who has the authority to agree the variation, please contact us on legal@epmgroup.co.uk with your customer reference number, the property address and a copy of your lease/transfer and title. Please also provide details as to what you are proposing to change and why. Please note that our client may wish to take legal advice and instruct a surveyor, and any professional fees (including our own) will need to be met by you. Please be assured we will not incur costs without consulting with you or your representative first.
