If you decide to sell your home, your solicitor should contact us to ask for the following details.
- The balance of your service charge account
- If there are any invoices for major work not paid or any work planned for the future
- Insurance details
- If the lease has been broken in any way
- Details of the service charge for the last three years
We currently charge you £100 for supplying this information. Your solicitor must pass on this information to the buyer's solicitor.
You must pay all the service charges, including invoices for major work, before the property is sold. As your service charge payments are based on estimated costs, your solicitor will normally as to hold some money back until the actual costs are known.
Your and the buyer's solicitor must also agree what to do with any underpayment or overpayment left on the service charge account at the time of sale. These are private arrangements and we cannot get involved in sharing our charges or sorting our any dispute that may arise once a property has been sold.
After a property is sold, the buyer's solicitor must write to us with details of the new owner. This letter is called a notice of transfer or a notice of assignment. We will then change the service charge account details details and write to the new owner.
We will not change the account details until we receive these notices.
If you rent a garage you should tell customer services at least 10 days before the sale. You must make sure that you return the keys to us and not give them to the new owner. You will continue to be liable for rent until you return the keys of your garage.
You must also tell the Council Tax department about the sale, and tell the companies supplying gas, electricity, water and phone lines.
Repaying the Right-to-Buy Discount
Under the right-to-buy scheme, you can sell your home at any time but you will have to repay any discount if this is within the first three years after you bought it. In the first year, you would pay back all the discount, in the second year two-thirds and in the final year one-third. If the property has been inherited by another person within that time, the same rules apply to repaying any discount within the three-year period from the date of the original purchase.
