Blresident

I need to know what are the various methods in which maintenance for common area is charged to individual apartments and also examples of each. We are having issues in our complex and any info will help.

ks2071746

Dear friend,
If what you mean is maintenance of common areas and " facilities " as well, like pumps, lights, DG set, lift, watch man salary etc. the total expenses are shared between the tenants either based on the sq. ft. basis for a large project and if the flat are less in number, say 12 or 16 nos. etc. the expenses are shared equally by the tenants. In big projects, the tenants are charges anywhete between Rs. 1.5 to Rs. 2 per sq. ft. per month . For 12 or 16 flats in the project ( no lift ), the normal monthly maintenance expenses range between Rs. 300 to 500 including the watchman pay. Of course, some expenses like pump repair etc. will become equally shared expense at the time of occurance.

ks2071746

Blresident

Thank you for your response. Yes I meant common facilities like watchman, housekeeping, lifts and pumps.
We have 50 apartments - 8 of these are 2000 sqft and the 42 are 1300 sqft in built up area. The smaller apts want everyone to pay by per sqft rule and the larger apts want to pay by a combination method - part of charges fixed per apt and part related to sqft. They feel this is a more fair way to distribution of common facilities expenses.

What should be a fair way of charging the apartments? Do we have any examples of apartments using each method?

hswamina

In BLR , the common practice is per sq feet method. Combination method is hard and I have not seen anyone follow that. Pls ensure that the rates arrived at for maintenance per sq feet, includes money for AMCs for lifts etc etc, building some kind of corpus for outside painting of aprt etc that will be needed 5 years or so down the line. It will take a long time for money to accumulate in corpus and so it is better to come up with something that is all inclusive, else you will be forced to collect Rs 10000 to Rs 25000 every time you have a problem and not many will want to pay that at time.

As a person who lived in BLR for long and now living in Chennai, i can safely say that the maintenance charges in BLR are a lot higher esp if you have DG set and lifts (pretty common in most aprts in BLR).

Regds,
Harini

ks2071746

Dear friend,

The most practiced and common way of sharing the maintanence charges for the project with 50 flats etc. is normally on per sq. ft. basis. In your case, there are only 8 nos. of 2000 sq. ft. flats and 42 are of 1300 sq. ft., being the majority, they may insist on per sq. ft. Better deliberate in your association meeting for charging same rate per flat irrespective of sq. ft. and you can put forth the arguments like less or same number of persons living in the larger flats and the floor numbers if they are lower floors for the larger flats ( say 1st or 2 nd etc. if they are so, which may mean lower use of lift etc. etc. which I do not know to what extent will carry water with the majority. I know of a friend of mine in GF in a G+3 floor flats project, very rarely uses the lift, but pays for the facility. Even those residing in the I floor do not use the lift much, they would rather climb up the stairs rather than waiting for the lift. Most people using the lifts are milk men, news paper boys, house maids, vegetable vendors, post man, courier, water can chaps, children going to the terrace for play etc. etc. in addition to the tenants. But every one need to share the common charges.

ks2071746

Natarajg007

Per sqft method is what is approved in Karnataka. However certain flats continue by division method. Ur builder should have sorted this out right in the beginning.

m1977

I find the per sq feet method to be grossly unfair for the following reasons:
1. The sq ft itself has been arrived at by dividing common area (as in SBA) into the flats (god knows how the division took place).
2. Maintenance charges are meant for common areas and common facilities which are equally shared by others and is completely irrespective of sq feet.
3. More people may be living in a smaller area flat (and consuming more water) than people in a larger area flat.
4. The larger flats may be vacant for a period of time for which the owners never used the facilites (of course, the security guards, etc, need to be paid but lift use is 0).
5. People living on lower floors never use the lift, irrespective of flat area.

The best way should be equal sharing of maintenance expenses.