Owl envy

Owls can turn their heads nearly all the way round. Their eyes can be at the back of their head whenever they want to see what's coming up behind them.

After looking through her service charge accounts this morning, Property Sparrow has concluded that having eyes at the back of your head would indeed be very useful, especially when dealing with freeholders and their agents. Why are some freeholders so reluctant to give out information upfront? Why does everything have to be in the past tense, behind us and where you can't see it unless you keep looking backwards?

On one of Property Sparrow's service charge budget sheets sent out by the freeholder's agent, there's an annual charge for gardening at the block. Looking back it was £135 in 2009, £330 in 2010 and £600 in 2011. There's been no change to the garden during that time and it's very small. Cross with herself for not spotting this and querying the massive increase much earlier, Property Sparrow fires off an e-mail to the agent asking for an explanation about why leaseholders weren't told about the gardening budget increase in advance.

A wise owl would have been able to see this coming.

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