Learning about many terms used in an apartment association can be very helpful indeed. These terms will come to your rescue when you’re facing a huge wad of legal paperwork, and when you’re finding the formal tone and legal jargon extremely hard to understand and digest. Although we all may know the generic meaning for terms like ‘apartments’ and ‘apartment owner’, the legal meaning may be more loaded that what people can normally comprehend. Knowing all legal terms and learning about various definitions from a professional perspective can thus help you.

When reading up on the terms used in an apartment association, always go for a trusted source.

Terms Used In An Apartment Association

Given below are a few terms used in an apartment association, and their proper explanation. All these terms are defined under the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act of 1972, which defines and talks about an individual’s ownership over a set dimension of property. You will learn more about the constituents of this act when you take up the registration procedure for your deeds and Declaration.

Apartment:

An ‘apartment’ is basically a term used to denote a residential section in a building that can be located in any of the mentioned floor, with any number of rooms. An apartment may also be present in more than one floor, or in parts in each floor. Apartments, as per the Apartment Ownership act, have a direct exit to a public road or street, or even highway. Apartments which do not fall under this category may have a direct exit to a public space or common area, which may in turn lead to a public street or highway.

Apartment Owner:

An apartment owner will normally refer to a person who owns an apartment, and has some undivided interest in all shared regions in the apartment complex too. The interest and other particulars will be duly mentioned in the Declaration, and these can be taken from the documents directly.

Apartment Number:

The letter or number designated to a particular apartment is the apartment number. The number will be mentioned in the Declaration, and it may either be a letter, a number or a mixed combination of both these things. The apartment number is first specified in the declaration.

Association of Apartment Owners:

This is a term that is used to denote all the members of an apartment association. The people who together form the apartment association are collectively termed as an Association of Apartment Owners. True to the term, these individuals will have an apartment in the premises in their name and will all be owners of at least one apartment in the complex.

Building:

In the jargon used in an apartment association, a building normally means a residential structure that houses at least four (or more) apartments. A collective building can also refer to a structure with two buildings with two (or more) apartments in each building. A minimum of four apartments are seen as necessary either way.

These are the very basic definitions that you first need to know and understand in order to proceed to the later ones. Other definitions on common areas and public spaces will soon follow.

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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. 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.