Management Companies' Fees in Suburban Housing Estates
national |
housing |
press release 
Tuesday February 28, 2006 19:20
by Cian - Socialist Party
ComradeCian at eircom dot net
Limerick
085-7077919
A scam to enrich developers and a privatisation of public services - SP Statement
Developers masquerading as Management Companies drag Tyrrelstown householders to Court this Friday, March 3rd. This will be a potent political issue in the run up to the next General Election if the political parties do not deal with it forthwith. - Joe Higgins, TD
At a press conference in Dublin today, jointly hosted by Socialist Party T.D. Joe Higgins and Independent T.D. Catherine Murphy, Joe Higgins presented the following statement:
A Scam for Developers
The Management Company structure that is being foisted on thousands of householders in Dublin and around the country is a lucrative scam for housing estate developers. Having made a fortune from the sale of the homes they built, they then foist management charges on the new householders for the upkeep of open spaces, public lighting, and public liability insurance among other services.
Hitherto the developers would bear the costs from the profits they made until the local authority took over.
Privatisation
It is clear local authorities have introduced the Management Company structure into housing estates in order to sneakily privatise public services for which they are traditionally responsible. It is wholly unjust and unsustainable that young working people saddled with heavy mortgages now have a new local tax foisted on them for services that householders in neighbouring estates have provided by the local authorities from general taxation.
Court Cases, This Friday, March 3rd 10.30am - Dolphin House Essex Street
Outrageously, the developers of Tyrrelstown estate (Dublin 15) who have made massive profits from householders are now dragging the very people who made these profits for them to court to try and force them to pay management fees.
Eugene and Richard Larkin are the directors of many of the Tyrrelstown Management Companies. They are also developers of Twinlite Developments Ltd., which built most of the Tyrrelstown estate. They are now trying to squeeze more money from householders by dragging them into court. I commend the Tyrrelstown Action Group's Campaign to Abolish Management Fees for providing legal defence for the householders.
A Political Issue
The Government and the main political parties that must resolve this new burden foisted on hard-pressed taxpayers.
Legislation is needed which prevents householders being caught in this trap. We also need urgent action to void the contracts which young householders were compelled to sign in order to be allowed to purchase their new homes.
This will be a potent political issue in the run up to the next General Election if the political parties do not deal with it forthwith.
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4These scams are springing up everywhere. I know of several people some living in apartments, some in new housing estates, where they are forced to pay anything up to over 1000 euro in some cases per year for these so called management fees. They are a complete con and people signed up because the need a home/house at the time. Now they are trapped by these legal entities with fees rising every year.
Actually what the people in all these estates should do is simply organise and refuse to pay...
Local developers in Co Cork are attempting to charge extra to buyers on new estates for the provision of 'services' such as adequate sewage systems etc - despite having been paid council grants when building the estates to provide those same facilities. In Clonakilty for example, having been paid the grant, the sewage system was not built to an adequate specification. The upshot is that every summer when all the holiday houses are occupied, the sewage system cannot cope. The stench is so bad in hot weather and at low tide that it will actually make you gag. Clonakilty-sewer-Merde would be a more accurate description of our town at those times. Many of the bays and beaches, including Inchidoney, are filled with green algae in summer because of all the raw untreated sewage coming from new estates with inadequate sewage treatment systems. The developers are now saying that if they have to do their jobs properly they only do so by charging even more money!
The building industry, along with many others, is completely out of control.
There are too many rip offs and scams in this country. People who are ripping other people off, it will come back on them. How can people sleep at night when they know they have just ripped off a young couple trying to start off in life, who can barley afford a mortgage. It happend to the Solicitors in this country, it happened to Pharmacist. It is going to happen to Builders. It will turn back on them and there will be no work for any of these people. Solicitors can now hardly get any business because they were too greedy.
I live in an apartment block (built the 1970's) and all I can say is that management companies and owners, are bodies that become enmeshed in bureaucracy (this is a different kind of bureaucracy from the old system of local authorities and staff) to a looser arrangement that can leave owners vulnerable to sharply rising management costs, services paid for and not provided, people sitting on committees who may have vested interests and then selling their apartments with problems in arrears to be dealt with. This area needs a considerable amount of scrutiny.
I have written to the Law Reform Commission about the situation I found myself in (a person with disabilities) and can pass on to you that they have done research on this area, and have published a book.
Likewise, the National Consumer Association have been at work on this.
Today, the Joe Duffy show touched on the subject again. Joe made the valid point that if a person's maintenance is say Euros 1400 for an apartment, this is in fact Euros14,000 over 10 years.
Someone pointed out how the charges increased from the time of purchase from Euros 1,000 to 1,400? People ought to be aware of this. The older apartments have maintenance charges now running between Euros 3000 and 4,000. People assume that because people live in D4 or D6 that they can afford these charges, they often cannot and are now retired and on a limited budget. They too can be hoodwinked by unscrupulus people who have a vested interest in the yearly maintenance of the apartment blocks and they fees to be collected.
Quotation from the Little Book of Rebels
Consuming Passions Ivan Illlich (born 1926....) Austrian born Philosopher, teologian and author of Limits to Medicine
'In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves, the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy'
Power is an addiction........
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