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Benchmark Property Director Paul Mooney recently contributed to a Sunday Times article "Service Charges: who really benefits?" examining the often thorny issue of what property owners should expect from their annual property service charges.

Paul points out that "good management company agents should strive to deliver value for money to their clients. An important element in achieving this is assessing what level of service is appropriate for a development and then ensuring you deliver that for its stake holders."

"Getting the apportionment of service charges right is another task that requires professional advice to establish how much each unit should pay. In a mixed unit development for example, the service charge apportionment mix can be quite complicated. You should be looking to pay charges on only the services that effect your property. So residential clients will have different needs and charges to commercial clients for example."

Paul points out that in his experience most people are happy to pay a fee for a professional well run development and as "Management companies are 100% reliant on owners paying their service fees to ensure they development is properly serviced and maintained” it is vital that all owners are paying regularly and on time.

Read the full article here.