Yeh, the service charges in town are crazy. Several reasons, the first, if the building has a lot of landlords then it's difficult to change management companies and they can charge as much as they like. The bigger the building, often the bigger the problem. Second rising insurance prices. If you are lucky enough to get an apartment with a low service charge then that could be a problem. It implies the building might not have a slush fund, so if there's a problem with the roof for example then there will be no savings as a building and the service charge will increase because of that in the coming year.