Paying ground rent

If you are a leaseholder owning 100% of your property, your lease may require you to pay ground rent. In some cases this will be paid annually or monthly with your service charges. You will be informed of the monthly rent that you need to pay in advance if appropriate.

You will also be required to pay service charges, which are your share of the cost of managing, providing services and carrying out repairs to the communal parts of your block or scheme. As with ground rent, some are charged annually and some are charged monthly. Please refer to your lease agreement to clarify how you are required to pay. Find out more about paying services charges here.

Your ground rent

Your lease will set out the basis of assessment of the ground rent and the method by which any future increases will be calculated.

Payment of the rent is a condition of your lease and if you do not pay the amount due you will have to pay late payment fees or interest charges. If you continually fail to pay the ground rent, then we may decide to apply for possession or forfeiture. This is a very serious step and will result in you losing your home including any equity/deposit that you put into the property.

Paying your ground rent

If you pay your service charge every month, your ground rent will be collected within your monthly direct debit.

Your ground rent is due on the date specified in your lease. 

Paying by direct debit

The easiest way for you to pay your rent is by Direct Debit. You can set up a Direct Debit over the phone with our contact team or your income account manager. Once it has been set up, your rent will be automatically paid from your bank account without you having to do anything. Your rent account will be credited on the same day that the payment leaves your bank account.

Direct Debits are easy to manage as you do not have to tell your bank if your rent or service charges change. They can also help you to budget your weekly and monthly expenses.

Other ways to pay

You can also pay your rent:

• At a PayPoint or Payzone store using an Octavia swipe card with cash or a debit/credit card.
• By allpay - call 033 0041 6497 with your allpay reference number and debit/credit card. Allpay is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• By debit or credit card over the phone – call our customer contact team.
• By recurring card payment - call our customer contact team.
• By standing order: you can set this up at your bank with the following details - Sort Code: 40-06-09, Account 00724556, Bank Address: Octavia Housing, HSBC, 90 Baker Street, London, W1U 6AX. Please ensure that you include your tenancy reference number with the payment so our finance team can post the payment onto your rent account.
• By housing benefit – at present these payments are usually paid directly to us by the housing benefit office.
• By Universal Credit - under this system, payments will usually be made to you and you will need to make the payments to us.
• By cheque – write your address and tenancy number on the back of the cheque and post it to us.
• By bank transfer: you can set this up at your bank with the following details - Sort Code: 40-06-09, Account 00724556, Bank Address: Octavia Housing, HSBC, 90 Baker Street, London, W1U 6AX. Please ensure that you include your tenancy reference number with the payment so our finance team can post the payment onto your rent account.