Your property factor: the register, the Code and the Written Statement
If you own a flat or a house on a managed development in Scotland, the company billing you is a property factor — and your position is different from an owner's in England.
Three things that exist, which many owners never hear about
In Scotland, property factors must be entered on a public register, and operating unregistered is a criminal offence.
In Scotland, factors are bound by a statutory Code of Conduct. It is mandatory, not voluntary.
In Scotland, a factor must give you a Written Statement of Services setting out what it does, what it charges and how it handles complaints.
Start with the Written Statement
It is the document that says what your factor has agreed to do. Most disputes about a factor are really disputes about whether it did what this document says, and most owners have never read theirs.
Ask for it if you do not have it. Then read the billing against it rather than against a feeling.
What to look at on the account
The factor's own fee, separately from what contractors were paid.
The float or sinking fund — money held rather than spent, and it should be accounted for as such.
Common repairs, and how your share of them was worked out. That share comes from your title deeds.
Anything called sundries, administration or other. Not categories: the place costs go when nobody has classified them.
If a complaint is not resolved
In Scotland, complaints go to the factor first. If that does not resolve matters, a homeowner may apply to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, Housing and Property Chamber.
The tribunal is designed to be used without a lawyer, and it can make an enforcement order.
Writing to your factor is the first step of that route. In most places putting a question in writing is sound practice. Here it is also how the process begins.
What the tribunal would decide, and what your own position is, depend on your development and your deeds — and on what your factor's own Written Statement commits it to.
What this means if you stop paying
Do not stop paying while you query a charge.
Questioning whether a charge is fair and withholding payment are two different things. A property factor can pursue unpaid charges as a debt, and can register that debt against your title — and the sums involved do not have to be large. Keep paying, and put your questions in writing.
Where Synclair comes in
Synclair reads the account and the Written Statement together and lays out what each line covers, how your charges sit against published figures rather than against a feeling, and what changed between years. Anything you report about the development stays on record with a date.
One document is enough to start. It is free for three months, and the three months begin when your first analysis is ready — not when you sign up.
Check your own statement →