In the housing industry, when you have a lease, it comes with a contract and contractual obligations, including monetary dues and service fees. As real estate agent Nick Millican comments, what happens in the all-too-common situation when your freeholder charges you beyond what they should in that situation?
Commonly, it is difficult to contact them about it, and you are left with a choice as Nick Millican sees it: pay the unwarranted charges or take it to a tribunal for a long process that, if won, leaves you with a hollow victory.
Recently, this exploitative situation has increasingly entered the limelight with an X post that went viral. First, a bit of context: the poster is a London woman who has previously taken her freeholders to tribunal for bad service charges. She contacted real estate experts such as Nick Millican to guide her through this process.
After her win, her freeholders still haven’t paid the money they owe her and have even repeated the practice, resulting in another tribunal. They recently began the proceedings to evict the tweet’s author for failing to pay the service charges they had no right to charge her far above the letting agreement (Twitter).
Though the government claims this situation is too uncommon to worry about, the possibility of forfeiture over fake fees haunts many renters, particularly when freeholders artificially inflate the amount you owe them. Unfortunately, Nick Millican finally states, it seems the slow, stressful tribunal process will remain the closest renters have to a remedy while the government turns a blind eye.