She is far from alone in finding herself landed with the problem of trying to sell a retirement flat that won’t shift while bills continue to mount. Averil Smith is worried that the lease on her mother’s retirement flat will be forfeited. When she died, service charges and ground rents were up to date, and she had recently overseen the property’s refurbishment. FirstPort says that service charges are kept in separate accounts for each development and used for maintenance, insurance and any staff who work there, and missed payments can cause shortfalls. However, they can’t be paused indefinitely because any shortfall in service charges affects all the other retired people who live at the development.

Source: The Guardian March 28, 2021 07:52 UTC