Bye Laws are the constitution of a Housing Society (Refer: old post on bye laws). Every registered housing soiciety have bye-laws that contain the governing principles of that society. Every society has the right to amend these bye-laws from time-to-time to ensure the governance and administration is more efficient.

However, in almost all societies its a night-mare to find the list of all amendments done to the bye laws at one place. These amendments are typically scattered over in multiple mails, minutes of meetings, some presentations or word documents – making it almost impossible to keep track of how the bye-laws evolved over a period.

Not anymore! In yet another first, with the launch of new Bye Laws module in ApnaComplex, members can read the bye laws and all the amendments at a single place. No more searching for documents in the repository – the content of bye laws and amendments can be accessed right from the menu bar by members.

Administrators can update the bye laws and also add/update/delete amendments and capture details such as date of amendments, date of meeting in which amendment was approved, who proposed it and who seconded it.

ApnaComplex makes information instantly accessible when you actually need it!

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!
ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

Flying fishes crossed with menacing black bats. Giant butterflies raced with Winnie the Pooh. Spiderman playfully chased eagles in the sky. It was a bright sunny morning on the 12th of February – a clear indication to Bangaloreans of the receding winter and the descent of the colourful spring time. Welcome to Galipata Time! – A morning with kite flying & traditional games.

The day started with enthusiastic children with their parents in tow, crowding around the stall of colourful kites, picking and choosing their favourite ones ranging from the traditional paper-based ones, shiny silver ones to the more sturdy plastic theme-based ones. After a little bit of trial and error, the “kiters” quickly got into the groove. And soon the cheerful, colorful forms dotted the sky.

After a few hours of pure fun in the sun, it was time to sit in the shade and play the traditional, indoor, games from long ago. While elders got nostalgic and smiled at fond memories, children looked at then with fresh eyes and thoroughly enjoyed playing games from Kavade (A Niche Toy Hive) – like Pachchisi, Pallanguzhi, Navakankari, Chaukabara etc. In no time, they got deeply involved and interested – trying to master the nuances and “levels” of the games, they had only so far, heard about from their grandparents. It just went to show that though times change, it just cannot wipe out the charm of golden oldies!

Finally where there are children around, can food be far behind? There were food stalls like The Green Pantry (We Think Green & Use Brown!)icecream, corn, etc to keep the spirits high. At the end of the day, everyone who walked out had a kite or more in one hand, a game in the other and a smile on their face! May more such events happen!

The event was organized by Namma Bengaluru Foundation and Citizen Matters. ApnaComplex sponsored the the traditional games for all the children.

If you have been thinking of providing your home a huge makeover, New Year is the best time to do so. Remove the thought from your mind that it will cost you a bomb; denial won’t help you achieving the makeover you want. Re-invent your home by deciding the perfect theme you want for the rooms.

To carry out a successful garage sale you need to first figure out what you do not need, that is, the items you need to dispose off. There can be many things in your house that are cluttering up your home space unnecessarily and do not have much use such as old boxes, extra clothes, unused furniture or more. Here’s a list on what can be thrown out.

The unused stuff above the shelves and beneath the beds, storage spots in the backyard; every place that has been cluttered with household items needs to be figured out.

Things to Do

• Clean all the items you plan to sell out so that it is presentable and neat.
• Check the online sources such as eBay on how much they are selling the same items for. Always remember that people want garage sales to be way cheaper than the others.
• Price everything decently with clear labels on each of them.
• You can use stickers in case you are pricing everything individually. Make different labels of the prices and put the items having the similar price range at a same place.
• Make signs to direct people to the right spot when you put up a garage sale. But make sure you do not put them up before you have organized the sale.
• Maintain a cash notebook and note down what you have sold and for what amount.
• Keep a change bag with you, which you can clip on yourself.
• Get packaging material such as boxes, plastic bags and other basic amenities so that you can carry things back home easily.
• Group selling with neighbours is a better possibility to sell off your old stuff as soon as possible.
• Make a list of all the people who would co-ordinate with you for the sales. If more people are selling off the stuff reach an agreement on the profit percentages to be shared.

Spice up Your Sale

• Don’t forget selling drinks like coffee, tea, cold soda to the buyers during the sale.
• You can add to it with having a sausage sizzle along with the garage sale. This attracts customers and also gives you new avenues to make profits.
• Cakes, cookies, muffins can also be sold along with the packaged items
• You can also put plants and pots from the plant cuttings in your garden, for sale. If they don’t sell it doesn’t really dent your selling plans.

How to Present

Set up the yard in such a way so that it’s easy for people to walk around and sell your stuff. Don’t clutter up the space where you have set up things for sale. Make sure you label the things so that people find it very organized and easy to sell.

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This article aims at collating and providing information for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and blog readers. While ApnaComplex has taken every care to ensure the information is accurate, we suggest to please use it only as a guidance for further discussion and action with help of relevant professionals.

Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!
Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!
ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

Prepayment Penalty is a nightmare that is suffered by the individual borrowers who take home loans for buying apartments. A prepayment loan generally means that all debts have to be paid before the due date. Prepayment penalty usually ranges between 1% or 5% on the total loan taken depending on the bank.

The NHB (National Housing Bank) sent out a notice to all the HFCs (Housing Finance Company) recently to levy any prepayment charges. This decision has been greatly applauded by the RBI (Reserve Bank of India). The ban is not only levied on the prepayment of the floating rate home loans but also the borrowers of the fixed rate home loan schemes

However, if you have taken a Prepayment Loan you just need to follow a few simple rules. Here’s a look at them

Rule #1 Negotiation With Your Bank

Before transferring your home loan, do let your bank know regarding why you have planned to pay your loan beforehand. If the EMI on your home loan is unaffordable to you or the interest rate is sky high, then the bank might grant you certain options like extension in tenure, partial repayment or a relaxation in the home loan EMI.

Rule #2 Switching to a Floating Rate Scheme From a Fixed rate Loan

Some of the borrowers let you choose a floating scheme of payment if you are finding a difficulty in paying your home loan. The floating loan scheme comes 1 or 2 percent cheaper than the fixed rate loan scheme.

Rule #3 Partial Prepayment

If the pre-play is taking a toll on your budget and the interest rate is too high for you to pay up; talking to the bank is always an option. The bank can allow you to make partial prepayments and lower the principal amount; they can also reduce the outstanding loan amount. Many banks have the option of a partial prepayment of the loan, which does not exceed 25% of the total loan amount.

Rule #4 Prepayment of the Home Loan from Your Source

In case you decide to go for a full loan prepayment or opt for a foreclosure with own funds, no penalty amount will be levied on you. These funds can be a maturity of bonuses from sale of assets and employment or life policies.

Home Loan is a major source of fund when you buy a property. The Home Loan EMI or the interest rate varies from one bank to another. Hence, it is very necessary to plan and choose an interest rate or an EMI or a home loan prepayment.

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This article aims at collating and providing information for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and blog readers. While ApnaComplex has taken every care to ensure the information is accurate, we suggest to please use it only as a guidance for further discussion and action with help of relevant professionals.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trail as well so that you can try before you buy!

Having your own home is definitely a priority in life. One of the first impressions while buying a home is that it should be large and spacious and that can burn a hole in your wallet. You start compromising on your shopping, partying and other luxuries when you plan to buy a spacious apartment.

However, when you actually move in to your new place with all the furniture and other storage boxes, the house looks crammed up. Figuring out the right places to store all the old and unwanted items is definitely a challenge. Following are some useful tips on how to effectively make your house more spacious.

Placement of Furniture

The furniture needs to be in the perfect place to efficiently partition a room into two. For example, you can use a big wardrobe to separate a large room into two, which will offer more privacy. A kitchen platform is a nice way of dividing an entire kitchen into a cooking space and a separate dining space.

Storage Space

You can always reduce the storage area by keeping all the container boxes and seasonal items below the beds or underneath the furniture. Buy beds or tables which have drawers or storage spaces in them. You can use shelves and hooks behind the doors or wardrobes to hang your clothes.

Colors and Paints

Using pastel and light colors makes your room look bigger. For better illusion you can use colors like cream, yellow, icy blue and white. Dark colors absorb most of the lights and hence make the room look darker. You can paint your room with light vertical paints to give a high rise look.

Natural Light

Avoid placing big furniture in front of the windows; it blocks the natural light from entering the room. It is always advisable to install high rise windows at your such as French windows to give your room a more spacious look. Don’t clutter up your window sill if you have smaller windows.

Installing Adequate Mirrors in Your House

Placing a mirror in your apartment makes it look more spacious. A mirror reflects both artificial and natural light. Using cabinets, which have mirrors, can be used to store a lot of small stuff. You should keep the mirror at a place where light falls on the mirror.

Electronic Goods

Making use of electronic goods can clutter up your home space a lot. Take optimum care when you plan to place the TV or the LCD in some room. Laptops are more useful than that of personal computers.

Interior Décor

The walls should not be cluttered up with many photo frames and pictures. Using one or two pictures on the wall is a better option. Feng Shui or Vaastu Shaastra can be implemented in your place to bring in a good ambience to your apartment.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!
ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

While setting up your house, remodeling the kitchen according to your need is an important factor. Eco-friendly updates to the kitchen are some of the best ways of reducing power and using the entire workspace. Transforming the kitchen into an eco-friendly one leverages the value of your apartment and also helps in conserving the environment. There can be a whole lot of aspects that can be kept in mind while upgrading your kitchen.

A kitchen can be easily made into an eco-friendly one by using many energy-saving equipments and appliances such as water-saving faucets, eco-friendly lighting and energy efficient windows.

Ventilation and Natural Light

You can save unnecessary wastage of electricity and save power by working closer to skylights and windows. By setting up your kitchen that way, you save a great amount of light. If your kitchen is not well ventilated and does not receive a good amount of light, then you should opt for LED or CFL bulbs. Installing an exhaust fan in the kitchen is very necessary; it fans out the entire bad odor in your kitchen and does not let the fumes stay. This in turn increases the amount of fresh air in the kitchen and removes any dampness. Using daylight controllers and energy efficient bulbs is a great way to save energy from being used.

Making use of Energy-Efficient Appliances

Energy consumption depends a lot on the appliances that are being used. Usually, new appliances always come with more efficient energy-saving technology than their previous counterparts. All modern electronic appliances use considerably very less amount of energy than the older equipments. All the Energy Star appliances use less energy and are more efficient to operate.

Cooking at a Time

Instead of cooking many times, try cooking once. Multitasking while cooking such as cutting vegetables can help you save a lot of fuel and time. Cutting of vegetables into small pieces increases the taste of the dish you are cooking and at the same time also cuts down the preparation time. The USP of cooking at a time is that you save a lot of fuel.

Choosing Cookware

Be choosy while buying your utensils; do not just go for the cheap ones as they increase you cooking time. Low quality utensils take time to heat up and hence consume huge amount of fuel or gas. Try not to use disposable products as they are made of low-quality cast iron, which affects your cooking process.

Adopting a Green Living

Keeping a separate dust bin for recyclable and non-recyclable wastes will help you do your bit for the environment too.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

ApnaComplex organized the Oota from Thota event on Sunday, 8th Jan, 2012 at Electronic City, Bangalore and here is the participants perspective of the event.

There was a sizable crowd of green enthusiasts with personal passions of greenery, gardening, no-plastic, organic farming and community well-being, bonding together through a common thread on this platform. Delighted to see participants coming from far distances such as Hanumant Nagar to attend the event and that’s true passion!

The pace got set with a talk from Dr.Viswanath of Garden City Farmers Trust – who presented some hard facts on the kind of food that we eat today. The dangers of consuming pesticides-ridden food taking their toll over a period of time was emphasized to create awareness. Though the speech was an eye-opener, all hope was not lost yet. Be it a terrace or a balcony, Dr. Viswanath & Laxminarayanan, also from Garden City Farmers Trust, showed the basic steps of planning for a garden, soil, grafting, seeds, seasonal plants etc. Pictures and success stories were shared on how even amateurs grew their own vegetables like capsicum and brinjal and fruits like the papaya and grapes in as little as 2ft by 2ft by 2ft space.

Following this, was another inspiring session from the Ms.Vani Murthy, another go-green expert who gave an actual demo of the materials that can be segregated in our day-to-day rubbish from our homes. Simple things like dry leaves, vegetable peels that can be separated out and mixed with soil and shredded newspapers to create nutrient-filled compost for plants. The difference between recyclable and reusable materials was also spelt out for the rapt audience.

The way the questions and queries from the audience till the very end were answered reflected the passion of the speakers.

Finally there were the packed stalls relevant to the theme of the day. Kids and their family thronged to the tasty organic chaat and snacks stall put by In the Pink. Then there was the unique and surprising flavours of homemade jam from Nature in a Bottle that teased your taste buds – you couldn’t resist taking home a bottle or two. For those looking to start their own kitchen garden, they were spoilt for choice of the garden tools and instruments, and exotic seeds by Varsha Enterprises. There was on display and sale, a variety of very informative and cost effective composting products and solutions from “Daily Dump” right from offices to homes to communities. Also present was Opron Biotech providing digital diagnostic equipment such as Thermometers, Blood Pressure Devices.

All-in-all a very satisfying and different way to spend a Sunday – one small step for the conscientious citizen. Heartening to see the pockets of change and hoping that this cascades into the right direction for Bangalore and rest of the world.

The event was supported by Garden City Farmers Trust, Celebrity Paradise Layout and Citizen Matters along with ApnaComplex.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

New Year’s eve provides a wonderful occasion for apartment complex residents to throw a party where people can get together and welcome a new beginning. To usher the new year in style, the party needs to be properly planned.

A New Year party is always a unique and fun experience as there’s a widely prevalent sense of expectation around. This is because every single person in the room looks forward to what the New Year’s got to offer, so a well planned party can provide the perfect stimulus to kick-start the year in a joyous mood.

Party Planning Tips for the New Year

A well organized party depends more on what is done before the party than during it. Here are certain tips that could help you in being well prepared while throwing an awesome new year’s party.

Come Up With Invites

You need to be sure of who are the invitees for your party. After making a list of the guests you need to send them invites in the form of mails or E-invites. Word of mouth may not be the preferred mode of inviting.

Fix the Menu

You need to plan the menu for the party in advance. Also, you have to decide if you are going to serve alcohol during the night. Many apartment complex parties do feature alcohol, although the residents are instructred to go easy on the same.

A little bit of alcohol can help in keeping the proceedings fun and your friends tipsy, so moderation is key here. Make sure that you arrange for both vegetarian and non vegetarian food in order to cater to both sections of people in your apartment complex.

It also makes sense to place the vegetarian dishes in one end at a separate table and the non vegetarian dishes at the other end, with labels  for the same. It is best to buy your provisions in advance by 2 or 3 days. Stock up on your beverages, snacks and other non perishable items that are part of your mini menu for the night of the party.

Amp Up the Music

Since your party is going to be a long one it is nice to have music playing to keep your guests in celebration mood. You could prepare your playlists well in advance so that you might not have to do it on the night of the party.

It is very important to ensure that there is not a single dull moment in your party. You can involve your guests in playing party games. Kids could have their own games like guessing others’ resolutions or word games with “Happy New Year” while adults can engage themselves in charades or bench games like move off my bench.

Be sure to plan something special when the clock strikes twelve. This could be as simple as ballons with confetti bursting over the party floor or a special performance to mark the start of a new year. Most importantly, do remember to have your share of fun at the party as well.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

As the year end comes , we just recieved great testimonial from Mr. Ganesh Raja, treasurer of Ittina Abby, a 200+ unit society in Bangalore who have been using ApnaComplex for past 6 months now. Below is the testimonial:

Gone are the days of Maintaining Excel sheets and reconciling the same for Expenses made … Gone are the Days of having a home grown solution that crashes or have sleepless nights thinking about a Hard Disk crashes… ApnaComplex has really revolutionized facility maintenance all the way from collecting Maintenance to spending it. We at ITTINA ABBY are so happy and yesterday also a resident was saying how easy it is to use it and they never have to come to the Treasurer’s office for anything.

Great Team who is always ready to hear our problems and offer a solution even if it means more work for them. Always there to correct mistakes made by our Facility Manager, Support is so important for a System like this and the Team at Apnacomplex have understood that very well.

Kudos to the team and hope to see them enhance this more as we roll into 2012. — Ganesh, Treasurer ITTINA ABBY LBS Nagar Vimanapura PO”

Thank you Mr. Ganesh for your kind words!! We are so happy to receive these words from you!

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Want to ease your (or your treasurer’s) burden? – Get on to ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners way lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!