Management Companies' Fees in Suburban Housing Estates

by Michelle Clarke - Social Justice and Ethics Wed May 30, 2007 17:58

I live in an apartment block (built the 1970's) and all I can say is that management companies and owners, are bodies that become enmeshed in bureaucracy (this is a different kind of bureaucracy from the old system of local authorities and staff) to a looser arrangement that can leave owners vulnerable to sharply rising management costs, services paid for and not provided, people sitting on committees who may have vested interests and then selling their apartments with problems in arrears to be dealt with. This area needs a considerable amount of scrutiny.

I have written to the Law Reform Commission about the situation I found myself in (a person with disabilities) and can pass on to you that they have done research on this area, and have published a book.

Likewise, the National Consumer Association have been at work on this.

Today, the Joe Duffy show touched on the subject again. Joe made the valid point that if a person's maintenance is say Euros 1400 for an apartment, this is in fact Euros14,000 over 10 years.

Someone pointed out how the charges increased from the time of purchase from Euros 1,000 to 1,400? People ought to be aware of this. The older apartments have maintenance charges now running between Euros 3000 and 4,000. People assume that because people live in D4 or D6 that they can afford these charges, they often cannot and are now retired and on a limited budget. They too can be hoodwinked by unscrupulus people who have a vested interest in the yearly maintenance of the apartment blocks and they fees to be collected.

Quotation from the Little Book of Rebels
Consuming Passions Ivan Illlich (born 1926....) Austrian born Philosopher, teologian and author of Limits to Medicine
'In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves, the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy'

Power is an addiction........

by Paul - ticketswap.ie Wed May 02, 2007 15:07

There are too many rip offs and scams in this country. People who are ripping other people off, it will come back on them. How can people sleep at night when they know they have just ripped off a young couple trying to start off in life, who can barley afford a mortgage. It happend to the Solicitors in this country, it happened to Pharmacist. It is going to happen to Builders. It will turn back on them and there will be no work for any of these people. Solicitors can now hardly get any business because they were too greedy.

by Shipsea Tue Feb 28, 2006 20:22

Local developers in Co Cork are attempting to charge extra to buyers on new estates for the provision of 'services' such as adequate sewage systems etc - despite having been paid council grants when building the estates to provide those same facilities. In Clonakilty for example, having been paid the grant, the sewage system was not built to an adequate specification. The upshot is that every summer when all the holiday houses are occupied, the sewage system cannot cope. The stench is so bad in hot weather and at low tide that it will actually make you gag. Clonakilty-sewer-Merde would be a more accurate description of our town at those times. Many of the bays and beaches, including Inchidoney, are filled with green algae in summer because of all the raw untreated sewage coming from new estates with inadequate sewage treatment systems. The developers are now saying that if they have to do their jobs properly they only do so by charging even more money!

The building industry, along with many others, is completely out of control.

by T Tue Feb 28, 2006 20:03

These scams are springing up everywhere. I know of several people some living in apartments, some in new housing estates, where they are forced to pay anything up to over 1000 euro in some cases per year for these so called management fees. They are a complete con and people signed up because the need a home/house at the time. Now they are trapped by these legal entities with fees rising every year.

Actually what the people in all these estates should do is simply organise and refuse to pay...