A new Jointly-Owned Buildings law, which aims to resolve chronic problems of management committees and various other practical problems with the current law, has been approved by the Council of Ministers according to reports in the Greek language media.
Once the precise legal wording of the new law has been prepared it will be placed before a parliamentary plenum for debate and amendment. If all goes well, the bill will be in place by the end of this year.
(It’s anticipated that details of the bill will be published in an announcement by the Ministry of the Interior.)
In a written statement, government representative Konstantinos Letymbiotis, said that:
“The bill aims to resolve the weaknesses and some gaps found in the implementation of the current legislation, including the need to define the rights and obligations of the main units to regulate various issues, but also the weaknesses in the existing management practices of such buildings as and the need to ensure a more effective implementation of management considering that unit owners escape their obligations and many properties are not adequately maintained, resulting in risks for their safety and the safety of third parties.”
Although the contents of the bill have yet to be published, we understand that every jointly-owned building that has been issued with a building and division permit will be required to have a management committee. This will be the case regardless of whether the building has been issued with a certificate of approval, or registered with the land registry, or Title Deeds for the individual units have been issued.
- Changes will be introduced to alleviate the problem of owners who refuse to pay their communal fees.
- The management committee will be obliged to maintain the jointly-owned building (an important health and safety issue.)
- Management committees will be able to incur expenses for the maintenance and operation of the common areas of the jointly owned building, which the offending owner has not paid.
- The introduction of administrative fines and other legal measures against offenders and powers for management committees enabling them to sue and to be sued.
- The establishment of a regulatory authority responsible for overseeing compliance with the new law. The new authority will be responsible for registering jointly-owned buildings, the registration of management committees with the Service and maintaining a register of the buildings and their management committees.
- The role of the Department of Lands and Surveys will be limited to issues relating to the occupation and registration of jointly-owned buildings.
It’s anticipated that the new law will alleviate many of problems faced by some 30,000 jointly-owned buildings, which it total comprise in the region of 200,000 individual units.
Communal fees & other jointly-owned building matters
In my 20+ years’ experience of helping people to deal with the problems they face with jointly-owned buildings the most common issue by far is non-payment of communal fees.
Although changes will be introduced in the new law alleviate the problem, it must not oblige the owners who pay their communal fees to pay the debts of other owners. These owners will refuse to pay the debt and, as a consequence, often refuse to pay their communal fees as well – “Why should I pay when someone else is not paying?”. Such a move will have a domino effect until no-one pays, the management committee resigns and the jointly-owned building falls into disrepair.
Management committees need to establish a ‘sinking fund’; money set aside for unscheduled maintenance and repair of equipment that is not part of the planned annual maintenance activity. A few years ago, courts in Paphos and Famagusta ruled that if the communal fund was in surplus further contributions to the communal fees we not needed. Under the present law, there is no provision that would enable a management committee to establish a sinking fund. There are ways around this problem as I described in Communal fees – sinking fund, but it needs to be included in the new law.
Management committees have been known to ‘do deals’ with ‘koumbaroi’ (friends) to carry out maintenance and repair work on jointly-owned buildings and pocket some of the monies. This practice must be outlawed and management committees should be obliged to tender for maintenance and repair work.
Management committees should be obliged to have annual communal fee accounts audited. Depending on the turnover, these would be audited by a professionally qualified auditor or, for smaller turnovers, three unit owners who are independent of the management committee.
I can’t see how a sinking fund can be a good idea as it will still be the payers paying for it and the non-payer still not paying anything. It is also ludicrous that a non-payer can benefit from others expense. No fees paid should mean a completely legal ban on accessing communal facilities but clearly very difficult to achieve. The thing is the non-payers know it.
As I replied to David Simpson. Some management committees have managed to prevent non-payers from using swimming pools, which are fenced off and gated. (Keys to access he pool are provided to those who pay their communal fees.)
Fencing off a pool also improves safety.
If you don’t have a sinking fund, how are you going to pay for unscheduled annual maintenance such as repainting the outside of a block of apartments or renewing roof waterproofing?
I am in exactly this position having taken over as committee chair of a large complex in the Universal area of Paphos.
If anyone would like to help or advise us, we are desperate for your help. If we can catch the non payers, we can have our complex looking great again.
Half are great and half are either not around or just refuse to pay, it is so unfair that the good payers do not get the services they should because of others who don’t care.
I suggest you get a decent lawyer on the case. In the meantime you can ban the non-payers from using the communal facilities.
You’ll fine a list of English-speaking lawyer provided by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office at
Find a lawyer in Cyprus
Nigel – I think you’ll find it impossible to prevent ANY owner from using communal areas / facilities.
The road, path, or corridor leading to their property is communal and you cannot prevent an owner from gaining access to their property.
We considered withholding the gate code from them until payment had been made but that is unlawful!!
Who is there to prevent a non-paying owner from using the pool etc. who will challenge someone staying in the non-payers property?
It’s all well and good putting laws on paper but it’s another thing getting anyone to challenge the culprits, sadly.
Naming and shaming at the AGM has its own difficulties.
I know some management committees have managed to prevent non-payers from using swimming pools, which are fenced off and gated.
Long, long overdue, we wait with baited breath to see the detail. With regard to non payers, hopefully there will be a process to avoid having to take court action which is costly and slow beyond comprehension with far from certain outcomes.
Also the ludicrous situation with regard to sinking funds needs fixing. Hopefully the revised law will not be just another Cyprus unworkable bodge-up.