Montalt Management - www.montalt.co.uk

Have owned a flat in a block managed by these people for almost 8 years. During that time their fee has escalated and their service diminished. Some of the problems are tenant caused but they do nothing to help alleviate this. Happy to snatch your money off you but not happy to even acknowledge or communicate with you.

Summary: if my contract with this Firm was direct I would have terminated it many years ago as they do not appear to have sufficient expertise to manage our property, they are incredibly slow at resolving issues including serious ones, they struggle to follow basic procedures, they do not keep full records of work performed on the property, they do not do basic preventative maintenance, they keep leaseholders minimally and inconsistently informed and they appear to have no experience of managing significant projects putting property at risk.

Over the last two decades, in my professional and personal life I can only think of two Firms with a service as poor as Montalt Management - both contracts were quickly terminated. The joyless triangle of freeholder, leaseholders and sub-contracted managing agent clearly makes this more complex and unfortunately leaves the leaseholder at risk of paying for a frustratingly low quality service (cf Principal–agent problem).

Some low points of the service have included twelve months without a functioning lift in our building while charging us for lift maintenance. No knowledge of where the water pumps are in our buildings and no idea on the procedure to manage turning the water off. An inability to maintain communal keys for the property. A general lack of regard for efficient use of leaseholders money including an expensive replacement of a communal carpet when cleaning would have been equivalent. No evidence of competitive re-tendering of contracts.

The lowest point is six years to remedy a series of roof leaks. My first discussion on this topic made me realise that I didn't

understand how many roofs we had but more worryingly neither did Montalt. The current proposed major work is procedurally iffy at best, lacks analysis/justification from a (RICS) surveyor and Montalt refuses to consult the developer/builder before completion despite attributing a design/implementation fault to them. They failed to act and ignored my requests for the surveyor's report for over six months - only an official complaint to the freeholder yielded the admission that there is none. Time will tell if they have paid "due regard" during the consultation phase. In all this time they have never had any mass meetings to present the project to all the leaseholders which seems the opposite of any best practice on engagement. Oddly, they do claim to visit the property every six weeks but this seems at odds with some conspicuous, venerable faults.

Another mystery that has been recently highlighted is a notice Montalt issued to all leaseholders but one that was not received by all. Several leaseholders were puzzled by subsequent discussions which revealed this disturbing inability to execute the most basic task.

Unfortunately, the one thing they excel at is blaming third parties and generating excuses. The latter often stand little scrutiny and tend to omit certain significant issues. The NHBC have taken the brunt for some of the roof issues but this includes one roof not even covered by them! Montalt were also under the mistaken belief the developer/builder had

"gone bust" - a trivial Google shows they were acquired by another developer - one hopes this is not typical of their level of due diligence.

Montalt have a minimal electronic presence, don't expect anything beyond email and a form on their website.

If you are a leaseholder and do not own a share of your freehold or exercise your right to manage, this fate is likely to await you.

I own a two bed flat in Streatham Vale. Montalt management have run the block very well for the past 10 years and I have had no complaints from my tenants. They have been responsive to queries that I have had and most importantly as an investor, they have kept our running costs down low.

The running costs are less than £1400 per annum which is very good for London.

I owned a flat in a residential block which was managed by Montalt for ten years. Initially I found them to be highly priced, for example charging £50 to sign a letter (acknowledging a change of mortgage provider), when the going rate was £12.50 and I felt that this marked them out as a fairly unscrupulous bunch.

Oftentimes unsubstantiated additional costs would crop up on our breakdown (e.g) we began to be charged for car park maintenance. Sure enough our residential block had three parking spaces, however, all of these were leased along with the ground floor to a retailer and resolutely not for our use, we just had to foot the bill for maintaining them.

However, this was nothing compared to what was to come. In 2009, the address/livery on the company letterheads changed and almost overnight so did our bills. Where we had paid for services under nine fixed headings, suddenly not just our fees but also the number of things we were being charged for began to escalate. By 2015 we had 17 separate items on our bill.

Some of these seemed legitimate however, their costs varied wildly from one year to the next and without any explanation. Around 2011 our collective water bill jumped from £1,100 for the block to over £4,000 and despite the fact that during this time many incidents of leaks/flooding were reported, we were given no answers.

Things came to a head in April 2015 when our service charge bill doubled. The breakdown of proposed works showed that the main justification for this dramatic increase was the plan to repaint the exterior of our block, at a cost of £30,000 to the leaseholders alone.

This did not take into account the 1 third share of the bill which the retailers on the ground floor (having a full repairing lease) would have to contribute. Meaning that as a block, we were collectively being charged in the region of £45,000 to paint five small rendered sections of an otherwise red brick block.

Many of us contacted Montalt to advise them of our intention to dispute their proposals. None of us escaped the condescension, intimidation and derision, both verbally and in writing, of our new point of contact, one (explosively aggressive) Mr. Kapadia, who insisted that the massive costs were due to the high cost of scaffolding.

Naturally we got our own quotes and found the work would have cost between £6,00 and a maximum of £9,000 including scaffolding. We got organised, registered with the FPRA (Federation of Private Residents Associations) and wrote collectively to Montalt, registering our concerns/anger.

We were told our association was not legal and that we would have to pay for the works regardless. Eventually, only after months of petitioning our freeholders (of whom we have similar misgivings), and painstaking research into the legality of their proposals, did we finally rid ourselves of the scourge of Montalt.

During this time they (and our freeholders), first acknowledged and then vehemently denied that we had a £7,000 surplus of funds. Only after we demanded to see a copy of the annual (accountant approved) breakdown, which clearly showed an amount of £7,000 carried forward, did they accept this. This is one of many, many individual battles that were fought over a six month period.

I would personally never entertain flat/apartment living again until the laws governing managing agents are changed and pushed in favour of the leaseholders. As a leaseholder, you pay for any/all works/maintenance to be completed, yet you have absolutely no power and no control over these ruthless so-called management companies. The law is entirely stacked in their favour. It needs to change.

As for Montalt, I am aware that they were taken to an LVT before our relationship with them expired. Had I been in a position to do so, I would have reveled in taking them to court and pursuing proper recompense for the nightmare they put us through.

Really poor service, have no care for the building or residents that pay them. Interested in taking our money and letting our building go to rack and ruin, really poor service and sub standard work.