Maharashtra Real Estate: maintenance fees based on apartment area
Recently, an order from the state department of cooperative housing regarding society in south Pune confused cooperative housing societies, resulting in members seeking clarification.
In this blog, we are going to discuss the new advisory and the clarification regarding the Apartment Ownership Act.
Recently the Maharashtra department ordered that there will be maintenance charges as per the flat area. But this leads to confusion because the point was not very clear. Because a flat registered under the Maharashtra Apartment Ownership Act is subject to maintenance fees as per its area, but a flat registered under the Cooperative Societies Act is not. In layman terms, an Apartment Ownership Act (1970) ensures ownership of individual apartments in buildings and grants such apartments hereditary and transferrable rights. On the other hand, the Cooperative Societies Act (1960) governs the development of cooperative societies.
So, both these acts gave some confusion to the residents. For instance, the order for the Treasure Park apartment at Aranyeshwar. The order was passed by Digvijay Rathod, deputy registrar of cooperative societies for the Pune city zone. As per Suhas Patwardhan, chairman of the Pune District Cooperative Housing Societies and Apartment Federation, the order is expected to benefit over 10,000 buildings. In the state, it is predicted to benefit close to 50,000. However, none of these provisions apply to the 1.2 lakh cooperative housing societies in the state.
Source: Times of India
However, apart from the confusion, this new order is in favour of society members. Earlier, irrespective of the flat area, all the owners were charged the same maintenance. A society committed member, Nilam Bhaskar Patil, said that they filed a complaint regarding the issue after approaching the department multiple times.
On 7 December 2020, the case was filed. The hearing was completed on 22 June 2021, and the order was issued on 8 July 2021.
Plus on the other hand, some citizens are demanding amendments to this new order. One such point was raised by Ravindra Sinha (Consumer rights activist). He said that – Act clause 10 of the Act deals with equal expenses and profits by flat area, but clause 3 explains expenses by agreement of the association. Sinha said that the apartment owners would be even more dissatisfied with the recent order.
Indeed, there are several issues raised by community members, residents, and activists. But this order is also beneficial for a lot of people. There are also plans to submit a PIL to make amendments to the Apartment Act regarding provisions such as election rules, audit rules, maintenance rules, and administrator appointments and nominations.
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