Ok so there are two different scenarios here, the first is if you have never had an AGM for your building or a legal management committee, and the second is if you have had meeting in the past and a committee elected but they all resigned or it just disbanded.

If you have never had an AGM

This is actually a little easier as you can just call the first general meeting without any major hoops to jump through.  You simply place a notice up 8 days before the meeting in a conspicuous place giving the date/time and location for the first meeting.

At this first meeting everyone should be entitled to vote.  Now their may be owners who have not paid the developer, but if you don’t have accounts or if they were not issued under the authority of the committee it’s most likely the developer’s private dealings to recover this debt.

Don’t worry if you don’t have all the information to set budgets and issue fees now, just get the ball rolling by electing the first committee.  

It’s the committee that set the budget and collect the fees so get them elected at this meeting and start working with the information you have. Once you have the necessary information you don’t need to call another general meeting you can simply set a budget and start billing unit owners under the authority and powers of the management committee.  You can find out more about setting budgets on my website.

What if you don’t have the owner database

I find that most developments don’t call a meeting because they think they need to have all the information on the owners first.  And as they don’t have this information it just sits in limbo.

The problem is, you need a management committee to have the legal authority to hold a database of unit owners and residents.  So, if you ask a developer or manager for this without a legal committee being in place, they will likely shoot you down quoting GDPR.

But fortunately, you don’t really need owner data to call the first general meeting.  Just put up a notice in the building at least 8 days before the meeting with the date, time and location and start collecting the information from this meeting onwards.

You are highly unlikely to get quorum at this meeting, but this isn’t a problem as you can simply postpone it for a week, and at the second meeting whoever turns up after 30 minutes is quorum and the meeting can go ahead. 

At this meeting you elect your new committee, and now this committee has the legal authority to hold the data of unit owners.  You may still get pushback from developers or management companies worried about loosing maintenance contracts so you may need the assistance of a lawyer to force them to disclose this information.

If you have had a previous AGM, and an elected committee but it disbanded.

If you have had a meeting before, but the committee disbanded or simply collapsed then its slightly more complicated.  But still workable

Basically you need to get 25% of the unit owners to collectively request a EGM to elect a new committee.  You may not have any existing committee to serve this to, so you can just post this letter on the notice board.  Under the rules if the existing committee don’t call the meeting within 14 days, you can go ahead and organise your own meeting.  Well you know the committee wont respond as they no longer exist so this should not be a problem.

What if you cannot get the 25% to sign the letter.

Worse case, you can go to the land registry and explain that you don’t have a committee and have not had an AGM and request their intervention.  They have powers to call a General meeting and elect a committee if owners fail to do so.  But this will take time and I am sure will involve lots of paperwork.

Organising the meeting.

Once you have got to the situation of holding a meeting, you can simply follow the steps in one of my videos, articles or live training sessions on the actual meeting structure.  Just go to my site www.CypruscommunalGuide.com for more information.

If all of the above seems a bit too much, I do also offer a Done for you AGM service where my team will take over all of the above steps and even come to your meeting to guide you through all requirements of the meeting.  Basically you just need to turn up to the meeting.  I will put a link to this service in the video description below.  This package also includes a free 1-1 consultation with me so we can put together an action plan for you so is very handy if you want to fast track the process.

First things first, here comes the legal bit.

Under the law, it actually specifically covers this situation.  So those people that first drafted the law probably had heard the same argument. 

you should have a copy of these regulations, if you don’t you can get a copy on my site CyprusCommunalGuide.com but basically

Immovable Property Act Section 38T subjection 13 of the standard regulations state.  “If a certain unit is not being used or remains unused for any period of time, the owner shall remain responsible for the fulfilment of each of his obligations and for the payment of the expenses corresponding to his unit, as is prescribed by these Regulations.

Which is basically legal speak for I don’t care if you don’t use it, you own it, you pay for it.

Simply quoting regulations will rarely help resolve a situation, but its just important to know the law backs you.

So what can you say to politely to combat this objection.

Its their choice not to use it

You can say that just like any other unit owner this person property can be rented out or sold.  It is their decision not to use the property year-round and explain the committee cannot monitor how much every owner uses their properties and adjust their share of expenses accordingly.  Its simply not possible. 

They still benefit from the maintenance even if they don’t use it

While a owner who does not live in the property full time, or rent it out may not get an immediate benefit from your buildings facilities being maintained they will benefit from an increased sales valuation when they decide to sell the property on in the future.  Or if they decide at a later date they do want to rent the property out, it will be more attractive with fully maintained facilities. 

Really, there will be a big difference in the value of their property if the building is well maintained year round, or if it looks like a dump 11 months of the year.

Also there are lots of expenses which are nothing to do with use of the buildings, like administrative costs, insurances which are unaffected whether a property is used or not.

It’s the LAW to pay communal fees

While quoting regulations on their own rarely work, its important that they are aware that the law does specifically say they must pay even if they don’t use the unit.  There is no provision in the default regulations to allocate each owners share of the expense by how much they use that facility.

If they still object to paying their communal fees

Well if they still refuse to pay their fees, you should give them an opportunity to see your active debt collection plan in action.  If you don’t have a debt collection plan, or it’s not working you may need to enlist the help of an experience communal property manager.  You can send me a message through Facebook or my website and I can help with this.  Either as a one off consultation to get you on the right path, or as part of an ongoing administration and management package.

Ok so just in case you were lucky enough to avoid all the news and effects of this, on the 25^th of May 2018 a new piece of legislation came into effect across all EU member states called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  This is effectively a single unified standard for data held on any European citizen and applies worldwide.

They gave plenty of warning about this, but most companies left everything to the absolute last minute as always and then completely overreacted to this new piece of legislation.

Ok so this law is in a nutshell. Of course there is allot more about the law than I cover in this video, but these are the key bits you need to know for communal property.  And I promise once I get this out the way I will let you know how this effects communal property and management committee operations

Firstly, the law states that any data held must be kept secure and in the event of a breach in this security, they must inform every person. 

You cannot share the data on someone with anyone else unless they have a legal right to see it.  And anyone can request to see the data that is being held on them.

Ok to bust the first myth, you do not need to have someone’s consent to hold their data in all circumstances.  You only need their consent if none of the following apply.

• There is a legal obligation which requires use of the data
• There is a legitimate interest which requires use of the data
• Use of the data is a vital interest to the data subject
• There is a public interest in the use of the data
• There is a contractual requirement which requires which requires use of the data

So only if none of those already apply then you need the consent from that individual.

Ok it’s a little more complicated than that, but that pretty much sums it up.

Does this apply to your management committee?

As your management committee holds data on all the unit owners/residents of your building/resort its important to make sure you meet the new GDPR requirements.  Failure to meet these regulatory requirements puts you at risk of a penalty up to 20 million euros so it is quite important.

Does your Committee need each unit owners permission to hold their data?

This is a big question, almost immediately after this new law came into effect, quite a few very cheeky unit owners who my management company was pursuing for non-payment of communal fees, thought they would be clever and say that because of this new law we needed their consent to chase them for their debt and the committee must delete their information and never contact them again.

And to be honest, this matter of consent is where most companies overreacted when the law came into effect and did silly unnecessary things, so maybe they actually thought this was true.

But categorically no, the committee do not need the consent of unit owners to hold their data and contact them.

And I will explain why, although consent is required in many circumstances, as I said before it is not required where the holding of that individual’s data is already part of a contract requirement or other legal obligation.  The committee have a clear legal obligation under the property regulations to collect and keep property owners and residents contact information and financial records to fulfil their obligations under the law and so have every legal right to do so under the GDPR. 

But it was a nice try for the debtors.

How should you store this data?

Your management committee must take active measures to ensure that property owners data is
Accurate (for example I suggest a regular email update to owners asking if any of their information has changed) And that the data is Held securely (for example in a secure account on a GDPR compliant cloud storage service).

Your owners and resident’s information must not be disclosed to any third party unless they are employed by you, have a legitimate need to access this data & comply with the GDPR requirements. 

A potential slip up for committees is that its quite common for a committee to put information on a noticeboard within the building.  Since this new law it’s very important to make sure any documents placed on a noticeboard does not hold any personal data of the unit owner or any other person, including name, telephone, email or other contact information. 

What if you have a management company, is this their problem?

While the management company should also be GDPR compliant, it’s important to remember under the regulations the management committee are the ultimate ones responsible.  So you are also responsible for the security of the data and must ensure anyone you hire is also following the GDPR legal requirements.  Basically, if they mess up, you will need to clean it up, so its in your best interest to make sure they are taking this seriously as well.

Again, very simple summary of a very long piece of legislation but this should help answer some of the most common questions on GDPR and its effect on apartment building and resort management committees in Cyprus.

I get it, keeping costs down is a generally a good idea, especially if you are having trouble collecting unpaid communal fees.

But you must be careful not to cut corners or make short term savings that will cost you more in the long term. 

As a apartment building management committee you have a legal responsibility to maintain the building, and failure to do so could cause you problems down the line.  Which is one of the reasons I always recommend committee liability insurance, if you want to know more about this there are some articles on my website CyprusCommunalGuide.com

Anyway, back to cutting costs.

One of the most common mistakes is to cut the maintenance budget or worse, remove it all together to cover a cash shortfall. 

Again before you start shouting at your screen I get it, we live in the real world and if there is no money in the bank, then you have no choice.  And maintenance along with cleaning are usually one of the first things to be sacrificed.

But you know if you don’t keep on top of the small maintenance jobs in your building, many of these small items will worsen over time costing far more to fix later. That couple hour job to fix an external crack can end up in thousands of water damage. So, really you haven’t saved any money there.

What you can end up with a development that looks tired, poorly maintained making it more difficult for your unit owners to find tenants, and can give the building a bad reputation, which is especially damaging if one of the main sources of income for unit owners in your area is holiday rentals. And I have an article all about the importance of online reviews on the website. 

So what’s the end result of cutting costs, owners don’t want to pay their charges and a near derelict site.

So actually, by trying to keep owners payments low, hoping this will increase collections, you can inadvertently make things worse.

If you are already at that stage, there is still hope but it’s going to be a difficult path to recovery.  I do offer assistance in this so feel free to send me an email at info@CyprusCommunalGuide.com or send me a message through facebook.

If you are not there yet, the first defence against this situation is proper budget planning, making sure you have accurate budgets for your expenses and making sure you factor in a budget for bad debt.   I have held entire seminars dedicated to the subject of creating your budget, keep an eye out as I run these quite often.

The second defence is having some contingency in place to cover any expenses outside of your predicted budget.

Budget Contingency, how much to save?

I generally advise my clients to allocate 10% of the total annual predicted budget, as this is usually enough for unexpected maintenance during that year.  

However, if you have a backlog, you may want to first allocate an initial lump sum to clear the backlog, either as part of your normal budget for this year, or as a special project budget.

Again a reminder that there are lots of resource on this subject on the website.

What if you don’t use this contingency?

If you are lucky enough not to need this contingency, then at the end of the financial year you can decide to refund it to unit owners, reallocate it for another project, or carry it over to the next financial year lowering the communal fees.

What you cannot have is a large bank account rolling over year on year which is unallocated. 

The reason for this is there were a couple recent court rulings which went against a couple of committees who were taking debtors to court. 

The court ruled that as the development had large amounts of unallocated cash assets it could not justifiably ask for more money from unit owners for operational expenses. 

While I disagree with this, as its common sense to have some savings for the unexpected, to help with cashflow and cover large future projects it is the courts that have the final say.

A way to avoid this problem in my opinion is have a budget for a specific future expense.  For example, if your building needs a repaint in 5 years, and you think it will cost 10,000 then why not start saving for this now as a repainting fund.  And of course, is something else comes up, and you need to reallocate this money so be it. 

Just make sure you have this budget voted into place at the AGM with a caveat that it can be used for other items in an emergency.

There is no guarantee this won’t have a similar problem, but it gives you a much better fighting chance.

In this twelfth episode of our communal property essentials series I’m going to cover the process you should follow when selecting a third party vendor such as a management company, a maintenance contractor and so on.

A vendor is any third party employed by the committee to provide a one off or continual service or product.  This may include a property manager, lawyer, accountant, large maintenance contractor and so on.

Unless dealing with a large-scale building or resort, the Management Committee’s selection of a vendor does not really any advanced formal tender process. 

However, there should be a process to ensure that the vendor is suitable, and the best value for money. This does not always mean the cheapest quote, as you usually get what you pay for.

General good practice is to request like-for-like quotes to be obtained from a minimum of three providers.

Each provider should be correctly compared like for like to ensure the process is fair and unaffected by bias.

Dealing with confidential information

Quotations and confidential/commercially sensitive information received from vendors should be kept confidential and never shared with another vendor.

Additionally, the benefit of one vendor’s work or assessment should never be provided to another vendor to assist in the production of their quote. All vendors should be expected to do their own investigation work and propose their own solution.

For example: If you had a leak with the pool and requested for a pool maintenance company to come and find the leak and provide a quotation.  They then come inspect your pool and through their skill and knowledge they find your pool is leaking from one of the light fittings, and propose a solution with a quote factoring in the time they have already spent.

Unless you specifically paid for a leak detection service as a standalone service, it is unethical to use the time, skill and expense by the first vendor to assist the other vendors in bidding for the job.

So you should not then go to two other companies and say how much to fix a leaking light fitting.  They will be cheaper because they did not need to find the leak. 

Set minimum requirements

Create a set of minimum requirements for your vendors are to ensure that the selection is balanced and fair to all and provides protections to the Management Committee in the event there are any issues or incidents with the vendor.  For example, you may set that you will only accept quotations for pool maintenance from a registered company who uses CPO qualified staff and hold full liability insurance.

Avoid off the books vendors.

You should not entertain a quotation from an unregistered, unqualified cash in hand trader.  The cash in hand trader will no doubt be cheaper, however, it offers little or no protection, is operating illegally and is unlikely to carry any insurance or expectation of a guarantee.  Hiring this type of trader could also be seen as negligent by the Management Committee and open up additional liability issues.

Keep records of the selection process.

One of the other important steps is to keep copies of quotations, requirements, decision making process to make sure that you can demonstrate that you operated fairly and in good faith.  Remember legally, you could be sued by a vendor if they feel that they were not treated on a equal basis or if you breached confidentiality with their quote, information or work product.

If you want to know more about the vendor selection process I include this along with how to perform a complete tender process in the Ultimate Committee Handbook.

In this eleventh episode of our communal property essentials series I’m going to cover how to organize larger scale maintenance projects for your apartment building or resort, how to finance these works and organize the bidding process.

All buildings require constant maintenance and most of the time this is just minor repairs but occasionally you are going to need to organise a larger scale project.  For example, your building may be getting to the stage where it requires a complete repaint, or your pool surface may be at the end of its expected life.

While small maintenance can be organised with minimal hassle, larger jobs require a little more attention as there are specific considerations when organising major maintenance works.

Selecting a Suitable Time

When major works are being done there can be a considerable amount of disruption to your buildings residents, however this disruption can be reduced by proper planning and timing.

For example: If your building experiences heavy summer seasonal occupancy, you can plan to organise these works prior to, or after the season. Remember, if you plan to organise these works before the season, keep in mind that they can easily overrun, so make sure there is a suitable buffer period before the summer season starts to accommodate any delays.

Protect yourself against liability

If you select a poor-quality provider or hire someone operating illegally without relevant qualifications & insurance, you can be held ultimately liable for the consequences. 

Remember the committee hold the ultimate duty of care towards the building/resort and its owners.  So check that they are a registered company or a registered sole trader, that they include their registration numbers on their quotes, invoices and receipts and that they hold insurance for the work you are requesting them to do.  If they are working on electrics, ask to see their EAC cert card.  If they are maintaining your pool, ask to see their operator qualifications and so on.

Also avoid any company who is trying to avoid paying VAT or taxes.  While the lower cost is tempting, this is always a red flag as it demonstrates their lack of respect and willingness to play by the rules, and they could have the same attitude towards safety and work quality.

Also don’t just take a provider’s word on their warranty.  A warranty is only a strong as the company that provides it. 

If that company goes out of business or if its not even a company and that contractor decides to retire or change careers your warranty could be worthless.  You could always take legal action, but this is itself expensive, there is no guarantees and even if you win getting the money can still be difficult.

Ask for how long that provider has been in business, details on their registered address, who holds the warranty is it them or an equipment manufacturer and ask for the warranty terms to be provided in a separate document.

Financing Major Works

Ideally you will have a detailed maintenance plan so major maintenance items will not come unexpectedly, and you will have a contingency fund and/or a maintenance fund ready to pay for these works when required. 

That’s the ideal, however things rarely work this way.  You may need to approach unit owners and ask for them to pay an extra payment on top of their normal communal fees to cover the cost of this maintenance.

It’s not a pleasant task, but it is in everyone’s interest to keep the building well maintained, and most units would stand to lose far more in property value than the extra payment if these are not organised. 

The bidding processes

Unless it is part of an existing contract or management agreement, you should always obtain quotations/bids from at least three different providers.  

This can be quite a challenge, as many companies are reluctant to quote on communal developments. 

This is because many of these contractors have learnt that its quote common for developments to waste their time by asking for quotes for jobs even though they have no intention in proceeding and they just to get an idea on the price. 

So to combat this, only get quotes when you know you are very likely to proceed with the work, inform the bidders of this and give a fixed timeline for the bidding process, also you may need to pay for their time when providing a quote. 

I know we are all used to this whole free quotation thing but providing quotes costs these companies money and so offering to cover this cost can help get the magic 3 quotes you need to make a decision.

It’s important to make sure that any vendor selected as part of this bid process is suitable and has all relevant qualifications.  Remember, you get what you pay for, so the lowest bid is not always the most cost effective. 

Leed into next Video. Selecting third party vendors

If you have a copy of ‘The Ultimate Committee Handbook’, Chapter 8: ‘Maintenance of your Building’ explains in detail how to organise a fair and professional bidding process and how to select the winning contractor.

But if you don’t have a copy of this book yet, stay tuned as I will be covering how to select third party vendors in more detail in the next episode of this communal property essentials video series.

In this Tenth episode of our communal property essentials series I’m going to cover the pros and cons of self-managing your building or using the services of a communal property professional.

I have a bias in being a professional Property Manager, so it may surprise you when I say that I am not against self-management of apartment buildings. There are many circumstances where self-management is a viable option, and some where it is not. 

Committees right to contract.

While the management committee are the ultimate authority when it comes to the decision making of a apartment building or resort and are put in charge of the finances, administration and management.  The regulations recognise that these volunteer committee members may not have the necessary time, ability, skills or experience to fulfil all the day to day tasks of running communal property.

So these regulations allow the committee to decide to employ a individual or company to assist them with their duties, and the cost for this is a communal expense and can be included in the communal budget.

So how do you decide what to keep in-house and when to hire these tasks out.

Assess your committees skills and available time.

The first step to take when considering the option of self-management is to assess the skill levels of the members of your management committee. 

If you are looking at self-management you will need someone with good book keeping skills, preferably someone with some form of accounting training.  They also need to be able to deal with debtors and difficult owners as the collection of the communal fund can be a time intensive and sole destroying task.

You will also need someone who can handle large scale project management, some experience of dealing with third party contractors, setting up strong operational structures and so on.

Also you will want someone who is good at recordkeeping and can work with owner databases, setup email mail merges, write notices /letters and minutes.

The next step is to assess the time commitments required to fulfil these roles as not just important to have the necessary skills, these individuals need to be willing and able to commit to the time required to fulfil these roles.  There is simply no point having a fully qualified accountant on the committee if they work 60 hours a week while juggling family and personal commitments.

Self-Management can be expensive.

If you have these type of individuals, and they have the time available to fulfil their tasks then 100% self-management is a good option and will ensure you have complete control while keeping costs down.

But the most common reason we find for buildings self-managing is not because they can do everything in-house but because they have financial problems, and are trying to save money. If this is the case, then self-management is NOT the solution. It’s a dangerous trap with potentially devastating consequences.

Most of these scenarios end up with individuals without enough time and/or experience dealing with essential tasks like credit control and administration. This can result in higher default rates, which generally makes the communal fees for each owner being higher than a development which is professionally managed. 

Also this can result in a higher risk of liabilities as they are more likely to miss an important requirement of their duties.

Consider a hyrid solution

Only a few years ago you effectively had two choices, 1) to use a property manager to fully manage your building or 2) do it all in-house.

Now the industry has evolved. While there are still a number of companies that only offer full service packages (and there is nothing wrong with specialising in a service), many property managers will offer custom services to perform specific key tasks.

The building can benefit from using the committee to organise the direct staff, use that local pool cleaner you like, but also have a professional property manager handle the collection of the communal fund, or the administration, or the record keeping, or a combination.

You need to find out what balance you want. How many and what specific tasks do you want to keep in-house and what do you want to hire out to a professional?

Well that covers the essentials on self vs professional management.  In the next episode of the communal property essentials video series I will cover how to properly plan for major maintenance works on your apartment building / resort.

All joking aside, this is a subject that I get asked about a lot. 

Someone will contact me through the advice website with a question like “My neighbor has enclosed their balcony”, or “They have painted their balcony Green”, “Are they allowed to do this?”.

When someone buys an apartment, they now have a shared investment with their neighbors.  What they do affects others around them and vice versa.

Buildings are built to a particular style and aesthetic, I am all for people being able to make an apartment their home, while people have individual taste or style this should be limited to inside the properties only. 

When you drive around and see a building that looks more like a Favela as some balconies are enclosed with different materials and outsides are painted different colours, It not only makes the building look unsightly, it can also damage the value of the property for resale, or rental.

The problem with unauthorised alterations to an apartment building or other communal property.

If someone has made alterations to their property without proper planning approval it can effect the ability of all unit owners getting their title deeds, and could make the buildings unsafe if building codes have not been followed.

To help prevent this there are regulations which are very strict to protect people and their property investment.  These are part of the Immovable Property Regulations which govern communal property. 

These regulations state, and excuse the legal speak,

No owner can make any alteration to their property that:

• Shall prejudice the rights of the owner of any other unit or interfere with its enjoyment by the owner of the other unit;
• Shall affect in any way the jointly-owned property, its smooth functioning or its enjoyment; and
• Shall in any way affect the walls supporting the jointly-owned property and its external walls, shall endanger in any way the safety of the jointly-owned property or shall affect its external appearance.

There of course additional regulations regarding building permits, planning approval etc.

How can you prevent unauthorised alterations to your communal property.

The easiest way to avoid this problem, is to keep unit owners and new owners informed.  Remind owners of the rules of residence at each AGM and list on your building notice board the important rules along with an important note about altering the exterior of the property along with a notice that any unauthorised alterations will be reported to the local authorities and if required subject to legal action.

This also helps if people go ahead and do it anyway as they cannot argue they were not aware they were not allowed to install that 18-foot statue in dedication to their personal hero. 

What you should do if they ignore you and make the alterations anyway.

It’s important to remember yourself, if someone ignores these rules it is a breach of the law, and the owners management committee can and should act to restore the property including legal action for damages/costs involved. 

If you need to act, it’s important to act immediately.  Have your developments lawyer send a notice to terminate works or restore the property or consider getting an emergency injunction from the court should this be ignored.  If you don’t have a lawyer for your development, you should look at getting one to be on hand for situations like these.  There are many out their that operate on a fixed price service where you pay an annual or monthly fee which covers all their work for items like this, contacting debtors, sending notices and so on.  If this may be of interest you can send me a message through Facebook or via our website and a member of my team can help put you in touch with a firm that offers this.

If it is a case of an unauthorized alteration to the building such as enclosing a balcony, you should also speak to the local municipality and planning office and file a complaint.  They have their own legal processes for dealing with this and can save you needing to go to the expense of legal action.

With this information you should be able to keep your building looking the way it should, of course its also important to keep it maintained, as an argument about aesthetics is harder to make if the building is 10 years overdue for a repaint.  I have lots of communal management articles and communal management videos about maintenance on this website.

In this seventh episode of our communal property essentials series I am going to clarify how you demonstrate to owners and authorities you are a legal management committee and have the powers granted under Section 38 of the Immovable Property Law.

One of the most common questions I am asked through my Facebook page and website is once you have setup your committee, do you need to register it?

It’s quite common to read on forums and social media about a requirement to register your management committee and submit the minutes of your annual general meeting each year with the land registry.

However, this is a myth as there is no requirement under the regulations to register your management committee with the land registry.

While there is no requirement to register a committee with the land registry, there is a requirement to register a copy of any ‘Custom Regulations’ drafted under the immovable property regulations. It’s this requirement that many people confuse as a need to ‘register’ the committee.

It’s also important to note that submitting a set of custom regulations is not mandatory, there is a set of default regulations included in the law which are suitable for most committee’s needs. 

How do you make sure you are a legal committee?

You must make sure that your Annual General Meeting is held in strict accordance with the requirements of the immovable property regulations.  Paying special attention to quorum and voting requirements.  If you want a copy of these regulations, I will include a link in the video description.

As an optional step, you can employ an independent legal advisor or communal property specialist to assist the development and monitor the General Meeting. 

What evidence do you need to prove you are a legal committee.

You need to create an accurate and comprehensive set of minutes for your general meeting.  These minutes must go into specifics on how the meeting was held. Make sure you include notes on the key requirements of quorum and how voting was held.   These minutes should then be signed by the meeting president and secretary and sent out to unit owners with a note to contact if any owner fees these are not an accurate representation of the meeting.

If you employed a legal advisor or communal property specialist to assist/monitor the meeting, you should also ask them to sign the minutes as a witness, or produce a separate letter stating the meeting was held within all legal requirements in their professional opinion.

To help the clients of my communal management company and the developments who me to help organise their AGM’s I also produce a validation certificate which details all the steps were followed. 

It is these minutes and any accompanying documents that any government authority, bank or court will require to verify your committee’s legal status.

So by following all the requirements of the regulations, and making sure you document everything to show you are a legal management committee, how do you make sure to protect your building and your committee from potential liability.  Well that’s the subject of the next episode in the Communal Property Essentials Video Series.

In this seventh episode of our communal property essentials series I am going to discuss the election of the Management Committee. Who can be on the committee, the different roles of the committee members and what to do if no one volunteers?

The management committee are responsible to co-ordinate the maintenance and management of the communal areas of the building. Their primary role is performing the administration of the communal accounts, obtaining insurance, setting the budget, organising maintenance and pursuing non-paying unit owners.

Who can be on the management committee?

The management committee is made up of individuals or legal entities who volunteer their time and expertise to the management and administration of the communal property.

Any person or even a legal entity such as a limited company can be elected onto the management committee by the unit owners.

The committee must have between 1 to a maximum of 5 individual members.  If you have a small committee of 1 or two members, they must be unit owners.  But providing you have a committee of 3 to 5 members anyone can be elected onto the management committee.  For example, I am on a number of management committees as a independent specialist even though I do not own units in those resorts. 

While you can elect anyone to your management committee, and this is the temptation to accept anyone who volunteers their time, its important to recognise the responsibility and powers the committee have, so choose your committee members wisely.  You want people who are helpful, trustworthy and have the necessary time and skill to be a positive influence on your building and resort.

Different Committee Roles?

Generally the committee is made up of a President, who is not the sole decision maker but is there to break the tie and have a casting vote in the event of a tie committee vote.  The committee president generally has the role of organising the AGM and is proposed to be the AGM president to hosting the Annual General Meeting.  However, if you employ a communal management professional or use an AGM Done for You service, they will likely host the AGM as part of their duties.

You then have a Committee Treasurer who is responsible for the supervision of the communal finances.  If you hire a professional communal property manager, the treasurer’s role is generally oversight of that manager.  However, if your committee selects to self-manage your property then the treasures role can be quite intensive as it would include setting budgets, setting the communal fee, dealing with payment to suppliers, issuing receipts, collecting communal fees, chasing debt and producing monthly summary reports along with the annual financial report. 

Many committees will designate one of the management committee members as the secretary.  The role of a committee secretary is to be the direct contact for any unit owners who wish to ask any questions or submit complaints.  The secretary is also responsible for keeping all the development records and taking minutes of all committee meetings.  The committee secretary is also usually designated to be the AGM secretary and be responsible to recording the AGM minutes.

How are the management committee Elected?

The Election of the Management Committee takes place at a properly formed AGM.  This is why it is so important to make sure your AGM follows the strict rules of the immovable property regulations as if the AGM is invalidated the elections and votes that took place during that meeting will also be invalidated.

The process of election is usually by a show of hands of those eligible to vote at the meeting (which is basically every unit that is represented and paid up with their fees). 

However, it can be requested for a formal vote, where every unit vote will count for more or less depending on their share of the jointly owned property.  If you have a copy of my book The Ultimate Committee Handbook I cover how to perform and calculate this method of voting in the AGM chapters. 

What is the Term Length of a committee member?

By design the term of each committee member is roughly one year.  At each Annual General Meeting all positions on the committee are automatically vacated and a new committee needs to be elected by the unit owners for the next year.

There is nothing to stop members of the committee putting themselves forward for re-election and it is quite common for committee members to hold that position for many years.  But they must be re-elected at each annual general meeting.

What if no one volunteers?

It always surprises me that many apartment buildings, developments and resorts struggle to get people to volunteer to be on the management committee.  To me this is crazy as I don’t know why so many unit owners underestimate the importance of the committee and recognise the benefit on having a far more direct role in how their valuable property investment is operated, managed and maintained. 

But if you do find yourself without even one committee member and no one putting their hand up then one of your building’s unit owners should inform the local land registry department. e

The regulations allow in the event there is no committee and a new Election of the Management Committee has not taken place the director of the land registry can intervene.

So, we have covered the basics on the committee and how they are elected, we now need to cover what records you need to prove the legitimacy of your committee and any requirements for its registration.  And that is exactly the subject of the next episode of my communal property essentials video series.