If you’re a freeholder of a home that means that you own all of the property in full, including the land it’s built on. This means that you’re responsible for the maintenance and any repairs that need doing to your home and on the land.
If you’re a freeholder but pay us at Yorkshire Housing a service charge, then this page will answer all your frequently asked questions. If we’ve missed something, you can send us your question by using our contact form.
- Paying your service charges in full and on time
- Complying with any other terms of your transfer
- Maintaining all the shared and communal areas
FAQs
Your service charge depends on what services we provide where you live.
At the beginning of each financial year (1st April), we’ll give you an estimate of the service charge. It’ll show you what your service charge covers, what it’s likely to cost and how much your share will be. We’ll always try and stick to budget but at the end of the year we’ll let you know how much we spent. If we’ve spent less than we estimated, we’ll put your share of the difference into your account. If we’ve spent more, we might need to ask you to cover your share of the costs.
Service charges mean that we can make sure your home is looked after. The charge covers things like:
- Grass cutting and looking after shared grounds
- Litter picking on unadopted roads.
Some of these services are carried out by us and some are provided by other agencies that we work with.
Your annual service charge is calculated based on what it costs to provide the services to your scheme or block. This includes the contract price to deliver services like cleaning, window cleaning and ground maintenance etc.
Please let us know if there’s something you’re not happy with so we can fix things. We’re always looking at what we can do better, so it’s important that you let us know.
We’d also love to hear your positive feedback. If you’re happy with one of our services, tell us! This helps us when we’re deciding which suppliers to work with.
If you need an extra copy of your latest service charge statement, then fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Just so you know, we do charge a small admin fee of £30 for extra copies.
If you need any documents relating to your home, like copies of your lease to copies of your service charges, you can get in touch with us and we can get those to you.
If there's a restriction on your transfer document and lease, you'll need a Certificate of Compliance to release this restriction. We can supply the certificate to satisfy the restriction so you can sell your home, please get in touch with us to do this.
A Deed of Covenant is a legal document which essentially lays out the restrictions or promises that should be followed when a new freeholder buys the property.
If you're a freeholder, in most cases you won't need our permission to make any changes or alterations. There are some instances where you'll need our permission though:
- sometimes there are restrictions within the first five years after a development has been built
- sometimes there are restrictions in the title.
If in doubt, get in touch and we'll be able to help you.
For some documentation or work done by our friendly team, we charge an admin fee as it's an additional service not covered by our management fee.
Our administration charges document will explain what admin fees are charged for, and how much they are.
Get in touch
If you’ve got any questions for us about your freehold, then pop it in the form below and our leasehold team will get back to you.