8/19/2023 0 Comments I lost flat stanley![]() Next year it will rise to nearly £4,500.Ĭross has been caught by the empty homes premium, an initiative designed to bring longstanding empty homes back into use. Although the one-bed flat is only a band B property – one band above the lowest valuation – this year’s bill is £2,969.44. ![]() ![]() He showed Guardian Money his latest bill from Folkestone and Hythe council. “But people are just very wary about the service charges, which on the two-bedders are around £7,500 a year.”Ĭouncil tax has turned into a nightmare for Cross. “They are really lovely, immaculate flats, with a lovely communal lounge,” said one Folkestone estate agent contacted by Guardian Money. What’s more, mainstream mortgage firms won’t lend against these types of retirement properties. Like most retirement developments, it only permits couples aged over 55 or single people aged over 60. One problem is the very limited range of people allowed to buy. The most recent sale there was for £80,000, a £15,000 fall from the price it sold for 11 years earlier. Of the other flats going cheap in Folkestone, many are in Pleydell Court – another McCarthy & Stone development. When Guardian Money checked this week, there were 18 listings on Rightmove of flats in Laurel Court, many with “reduced” stickers. The agent says it is in “impeccable condition” but warns that service charges apply. A two-bed flat in the block is currently listed on Rightmove at £45,000, and is the cheapest property for sale in the whole of Folkestone. Another purchased for £151,000 in November 2009 sold for £105,000 in April this year. A flat bought in April 2010 for £150,000 sold for £75,000 last year. That’s no comfort for many who bought in Cross’s development, Laurel Court. But more recent research from the EAC showed that retirement flats built since 2009 have increased their value upon resale. Figures prepared for the BBC in 2017 by the Elderly Accommodation Counsel, a charity, found that about half of new-build retirement homes sold during a 10-year period were later resold at a loss. “So much for the early bird discount,” he says.Ĭross is not alone in finding that retirement flats can be a poor investment. The stress has been so much, and to be honest it’s made me so stroppy and moody, it’s cost me my relationship too.”Ĭross says that when he researched Land Registry figures, he found that other flats in the development had been sold for £99,000 when new. One of the buy-it-now companies has offered me as little as £15,000 for it. I’ve got my own home to pay for, and you can’t run two houses on a normal wage. “In total it’s costing me £900 a month to keep. “I’m going to go bankrupt at this rate,” he says. While the flat has been on the market, Cross has been liable for the service charge, ground rent and council tax, shelling out £18,000 so far. “The feedback from the selling agents is that the high cost of service charges puts people off buying,” says Cross. In other words, a retired person could be paying nearly all their state pension in service and ground rent charges. On top of that, the ground rent is a further £415 a year. Last year the charge was £562 every month – equal to £6,744 a year, although this year it dropped back to £519 a month. Why not? Cross blames what he describes as the “punitive” service charge on the one-bed flat. But even at this price, he can’t find a buyer. When Cross first inherited the flat in 2015, the estate agents put it on the market for £143,000. Perhaps even more shocking is the council tax bill on Cross’s one-bed flat, which has spiralled to £3,000 this year and is heading to £4,500 next year – or more than the tax on a multimillion-pound mansion in Mayfair. McCarthy & Stone is the biggest builder of retirement flats in Britain, with 1,200 developments across the country, and sales of about £700m a year, but has faced repeated accusations of poor resale values.
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