It is a well known fact that a residents welfare association is a necessary wing in every gated community. These apartment associations help in organizing all public events in an apartment and play an active role in maintaining the apartment’s infrastructure by giving out responsibilities for all its members, so that they do their share for maintaining the apartment as a haven for harmonious living.

You’ll need to know the lowdown on what goes on within the ranks in an apartment in order to fit yourself into the association, and find your true calling in the group.

The Roles

When an apartment association or resident welfare society is formed in an apartment complex, all apartment owners are termed as members and all tenants who are staying in the apartment on a rented basis are termed as associate members. All members together form the general body of the apartment association.

The top tier in an apartment complex is called as the Management Committee. This Management Committee comprises of a President, a Vice President, A Secretary, A Treasurer, and other office bearer members. Some of these roles have already been discussed earlier. People are voted into these respective positions by all members, excluding associate members.

The Management Committee in an apartment association serves as a section that deals with all legal issues and upholds human rights and other interests within the apartment. The Management Committee has its own fair share of duties in an apartment complex, a few of which have been discussed below.

Management Committee Duties

• The Management Committee in an apartment association is responsible for organizing public amenities for all residents in the apartment (including gyms, parks, and roads).
• The committee is also primarily responsible for organizing cultural activities during particular occasions like national holidays (flag hoisting and other group activities).
• The committee is in charge of organizing recreational facilities for all residents too.
• The Management Committee should defend the interests and rights of every single member in its ranks, especially in the face of legal issues and the like.
• The committee will also be responsible for handling all documents related to the apartment complex, and it has to ensure the safety of these documents too. The licensure and permission given for the building’s construction also needs to be maintained well by the committee.
• Maintaining financial records and bank accounts will also be the committee’s responsibility.
• The committee also has to ensure that the amount of money collected from all residents for maintenance purposes is effectively spent on repairing and improving the infrastructure and should maintain records for the same.
• The Management Committee should also conduct regular meetings including all members and discuss everyday issues and problems and doubts if any, which can be clarified during the course of these meetings.

All members of the apartment association should attend such organized meetings and should exercise their right to vote in the face of committee issues. They should also follow all guidelines stated by the Management Committee and in this way, contribute their part to the community, making the apartment complex a peaceful place to live and co-exist in!

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A resident welfare association is necessary, as it can serve as a committee through which queries can be explained, and issues and problems solved. The presence of a committee or resident welfare association will also spice up interaction among residents and get them to contribute equally from their part. Such open social interaction will improve the joy of living in an apartment complex.

A resident welfare association, however, needs to be registered under the government for it to be recognized as a proper association. A registered resident welfare association will this way be able to enjoy many legal benefits. While forming a registered resident welfare association, make sure that you have more than seven members who are at least eighteen (or above) years of age. This is very important.

 

The primary objective of every resident welfare association would be to collect the common maintenance charges from every single resident in the apartment and use this in establishing good public infrastructure for the residents. An association will normally have to be formed under The Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act of 1972 or
The Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960 (and appropriate act for states other than Karnataka).

Every resident welfare association will have a management committee, a president, a treasurer and a secretary, apart from the regular members. There are many common responsibilities that members of the association should take up among themselves, and some of these have been mentioned below (we will cover other roles in future blog posts):

The President’s Role:

• The President will be given the authority to defend any form of legal action that is taken against the association, and will also be given the authority to sue people for legal purposes and reasons.
• The President of a resident welfare association will have the final call in approving a contract that is brought by the committee and implementing the terms.
• The President should maintain an overall view on the occurrences and ensure that all residents and members are satisfied without having any qualms or problems. The President should also oversee all expenses and make sure that they are put to good use.

The Treasurer’s Role:

• The Treasurer in a resident welfare association will be given the task of maintaining all funds within the organization. The responsibility of maintaining the money safely along with all documents also rests solely with the Treasurer.
• The Treasurer’s role is a demanding one and should be bestowed upon an experienced person with good management capabilities, as these documents and funds are very important for the association.
• The Treasurer should also make note of the overall income and also calculate monthly and yearly expenditures. This way the flow of money will be constantly regulated for the benefit of the residents.

The Secretary’s Role:

• The secretary in a resident welfare association will be given the responsibility of conducting various general body meetings.
• The secretary will also be given the responsibility of compiling the minutes of the meeting and analyzing the overall information brought to the table.
• The secretary will have to bring up concerns from each individual resident in order to ensure active participation of all members. 

These are the three major roles in any resident welfare association, and you’ll need to be aware of all such responsibilities involved, in order to contest for the spot yourself, or even in order to vote for the right person when the polls come up.

ApnaComplex supports the notion of committee members – administrators can tag members with different committee member roles and even give “permissions” to modules specific to thier roles. For example, a member can be tagged as a treasurer can be given access to only accounting modules. ApnaComplex is an apartment managment software. We are now offering a 30-day no obligation free trial for every complex. Go ahead and register your complex and see how you can manage your complex more easily, efficiently, and effectively.

As a resident of an apartment complex, you are required to pay a monthly charge for the upkeep and maintenance of your society.  This maintenance charge is usually arrived at taking into account the monthly expenses plus an additional amount that the society can save for major repairs or maintenance that will arise at a later date. Every housing society decides on a method that it believes is a fair and reasonable way of calculating the amount for each member.  While this may sound like a simple agenda, at times, it’s not so simple to carry out due to the different ways in which the amount can be calculated. Here, we present some of the popular ways in which societies calculate maintenance charges along with their respective pros and cons:

Pay per Square Feet:

This is the most common and popular way of calculating maintenance fee. In this type of calculation, a fixed rate is charged per super built up area of the apartment that you own. For example, if the fixed rate is Rs. 2 and you own a 1000 sq. ft. apartment, your maintenance charge will be Rs. 2,000 per month. In this type of arrangement, the bigger the area of the house, the higher you pay as maintenance charge. So in apartment complexes with apartments of varying sizes, you’ll have people paying different amounts per month as maintenance charge.

Pros: It is easier to calculate. This method is one of the most commonly used methods in apartment complexes.
Cons: While this method is popular, it is unfair on people owning larger houses as some of the facilities that they use like a lift, the garden, the club, security services etc. are equally shared among all members irrespective of the size of the flat.

Combined Maintenance Charges:

In this method, the maintenance amount is divided into two parts. Part 1 includes all expenses that are equally utilized by members, irrespective of the size of their apartments. This includes the cost of maintaining lifts, salaries for security and other staff, costs for stationery, property taxes of society office, conveyance, meeting charges, audit fees, legal charges, common electricity charges, etc. The other part is calculated on the basis of the area of the flat and includes items like property taxes, water charges, etc. This is also the method advocated by the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Model Bye-Laws.

Of this amount collected, everything is an immediate outgo for the society except for the amount collected as sinking fund. This amount is used when the society needs funds to carry out major repairs or maintenance. So instead of collecting the amount from the members at one time, the society can dip into the sinking fund that has grown over the years. The bye-laws recommend collecting at least 0.25% per annum of the cost of construction of each apartment (excluding the cost of the land) as sinking fund corpus. The AGM can vote to collect a higher amount than this if required. The amount is calculated on size of the apartment. This amount remains with the society until any major repairs has to be undertaken. In case the owner sells the apartment, this money is not returned to him/her.                                       

Pros: Aims to be fair on all parties involved. The members owning a bigger apartment is not penalized based on the size of the apartment. All other expenses which are related to the size of the apartment are charged as per dimensions of the apartment.
Cons: There can be lot of differences of opinion on the items that should be charged as per size of the apartment.

Equal Maintenance Fee:

This method is favoured in apartment complexes where the size of each apartment is the same. Here, the fixed amount is arrived at after calculating the monthly expenses plus the amount to be kept aside in the sinking fund and dividing the total by the number of apartments in the society. As costs increase, this amount gets revised in the Annual General Meeting. For complexes where apartments are of different sizes, this method will be unfair and is usually not accepted by the members.

 Pros: Easy to implement in societies with same-sized apartments.
Cons: Unfair to smaller apartment owners in societies with different-sized apartments. The greater the difference in size of the apartments, the higher will be the discrepancies in the maintenance charges between the members.

In all methods, it is recommended that the maintenance amount calculation be revisited at least once in six months based on the actual expenses incurred in the past 6 months and the contingency amount that the association would like to maintain for any exigencies.

While these are some popular ways of calculating the maintenance charge, a residential society can arrive at any system that is considered fair and acceptable to all members of the society. If there is any doubt, you can refer to the model bye-laws and decide on the best way to calculate the maintenance charge in your Annual General Body Meeting.

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This article aims at collating and providing information on maintenance charge calculations for residential complexes for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and readers. While ApnaComplex has taken every care to ensure the information is accurate, we suggest to please use the information in the article and the template provided only as a guidance for further discussion and action with help of relevant professionals. If you need professional advise on this topic and any other property related matters, please send your request through our contact us form. You may post your questions/inputs in the Comments section below and we will try and get them answered through relevant subject matter experts.