Community Questions

Hi All,

A friend of mine has posed a question regarding the community charges of the underground car parking on our development. We have all recently completed and received our first letter informing us that the first meeting will be held this month. We have been in touch with eachother and are not sure who we should ask to be a representative as it looks as though none of us will be there at the time. My husband is over at the moment and so are our neighbours, so they are going to make some enquiries. My friend did raise a valid question which I hadn't thought about. The majority of us didn't purchase a space in the underground car park so the question is will we still liable to pay for the up keep of the car park as we don't have a space and second if they are sold off to anyone else who doesn't own a property on the development will they have to contribute? We have asked on our development board but everyone seems to be in the same boat at the moment as we are all newbies. Can anyone help please?? Thanks so much.

Gina

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If the carparking spaces are not included in the sale of the apartment, ie. if you have to purchase them seperately, then you should not be paying Community charges on them. They are a seperate entity and have to have their own Community which will only involve those people who have purchased a space.

Our apartment block has underground parking and the spaces were purchased seperately to the apartments. There are about 180 spaces and currently only about 30 of the spaces have been bought..(the apartments are 5 years old ). The garage area has not been handed over by the builder as he said he wants to sell more spaces. The garage area has not been completed as yet. In this car park area is the communal lift shaft and water rooms so the situation is quite complex and infuriating.

As for your first meeting...well you should have an agenda and a proxy voting form, although it is always difficult at first to sort out what is going on. Does your meeting notice tell you who is being promoted as Administrator? If so contact them. Remember though, after the minutes of any meeting are sent out, you have 30 days to object, or record your objection to any decisions made.

Good luck!!

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Hi Candyfloss.    That could be a sticky one regarding paying for upkeep of the garage area if its under the building . It all depends the way the community charge is worked out  such as per sq. mtr per apartment  or the administrators might like to lump the whole lot together to make it easy for them, the normal rules are if you have no access to community services you dont have to pay for it  but as the garage area is part of the building they could try and share the running costs such as electric doors painting etc. We think every apartment should have a parking space /storeroom included in the price as is the case with some builds . I think its just another way to get more money out of the buyers. Where we lived we had parking areas made at great cost  with new road also white lines, even though we had no car on site also many other people had no car all the running costs came out of the normal fund so we all paid (car or not).          best of luck with this problem      Regards Rosi n

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Thank you Karensun and Rosi,

Good to have some help as we are all newbies on the block and so many of you have past experiences on things. Great forum and everyone is so helpful.

Thanks again

Gina

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The garage can be included as part of the same community, but when the budget for the year is worked out by the administrator (and approved by your elected president) the anticipated costs for the upkeep of the community should be split into different categories, i.e. apartments/garages/commercial locales. A separate quota can then be calculated for garage spaces. In order to keep the budgets and quotas entirely separate, it may be advantageous to have separate bank accounts for each category.

However, it can get complicated working out what proportion of certain costs should be allocated to which area. For example, the lifts likely serve both apartments and garage, and it's impossible to say what proportion of the maintanance of the lift should be for the account of the garages as opposed to the apartments. In our community, the automated garage doors and the lights in the garage run off the same meter as the rest of the community installations such as the lights in the corridors, so again, how do you split it? It would certainly be much simpler if all the garage spaces belonged to (and were inseperable from) an apartment, but that's rarely the case. Similarly with basement store rooms (trasteros).

Gina, since you (presumably, from your post) do not own a garage space, it's important for you to make sure that the community is set up with separate budgets for apartments and garages, so that you are not paying for the upkeep of communal facilities which you do not participate in. When you receive the annual budget you will be able to see if this has been done. If you are unable to attend the first meeting yourself, try to get someone to represent you by proxy, and ask them to check if this is in fact the case.

Hope this makes sense?

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