M
mr_cc
New Member
Hello All, accidental landlord here considering selling.
Background - Back when I was a young man in 2005 I purchased a flat in a large Victorian converted house containing 9 flats for 85k as a bachelor pad. Then the building was mostly owner occupied, with a leaseholder led management company set up.
This was great until I met my wife, married and bought a house. We initially rented my flat as the market had dipped a touch and we would have walked away still owing on it.
Fast forward 10 years, and I still have the flat with a relatively small mortgage of 30k it rents really easily - has never been empty for more than 2 weeks, rent covers my repayment mortgage which has about 9 years left to run.
I would now love to sell my flat as we are moving house again and could do with the cash. Similar flats are selling from 70k to 100k in the local area.
However the current situation is that 4 out of 9 of the flats have been purchased by a property developer - along with the freehold for the house. He has shown zero interest in maintaining the overall building and hasn't contributed anything to building maintenance in the 3 years he has been about. He has renovated his own flats but flat out refuses to pay towards overall maintenance of the building or engage with the other leaseholders. The remaining 5 owners still pay a service charge with which we pay for the most basic management only - cleaning, gardening, roof repairs etc... but we cant afford to do anything deeper.
Question is, would anyone in their right mind purchase such a property? Is it worth trying to sell at all given that a lot of buyers will be put off? How would I even go about selling a flat with a problem like this?
Its not a tremendous drain on our income or anything, whilst we have a tenant in its pretty neutral financially month to month (and the mortgage is ticking down nicely) , so keeping hold of it is not the worst thing that could happen, but I never planned to become a landlord and I really do want to shift it on.
Thanks!
Background - Back when I was a young man in 2005 I purchased a flat in a large Victorian converted house containing 9 flats for 85k as a bachelor pad. Then the building was mostly owner occupied, with a leaseholder led management company set up.
This was great until I met my wife, married and bought a house. We initially rented my flat as the market had dipped a touch and we would have walked away still owing on it.
Fast forward 10 years, and I still have the flat with a relatively small mortgage of 30k it rents really easily - has never been empty for more than 2 weeks, rent covers my repayment mortgage which has about 9 years left to run.
I would now love to sell my flat as we are moving house again and could do with the cash. Similar flats are selling from 70k to 100k in the local area.
However the current situation is that 4 out of 9 of the flats have been purchased by a property developer - along with the freehold for the house. He has shown zero interest in maintaining the overall building and hasn't contributed anything to building maintenance in the 3 years he has been about. He has renovated his own flats but flat out refuses to pay towards overall maintenance of the building or engage with the other leaseholders. The remaining 5 owners still pay a service charge with which we pay for the most basic management only - cleaning, gardening, roof repairs etc... but we cant afford to do anything deeper.
Question is, would anyone in their right mind purchase such a property? Is it worth trying to sell at all given that a lot of buyers will be put off? How would I even go about selling a flat with a problem like this?
Its not a tremendous drain on our income or anything, whilst we have a tenant in its pretty neutral financially month to month (and the mortgage is ticking down nicely) , so keeping hold of it is not the worst thing that could happen, but I never planned to become a landlord and I really do want to shift it on.
Thanks!
