Calis Beach and Fethiye Turkey Discussion Forum
Calis Beach Forum => Expat & Property Owners Q and A Forum => Topic started by: Liz 101 on July 27, 2011, 00:15:11 AM
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For any new owners, here's a quick guide to condo law
http://www.fethiyetimes.com/expat-zone/property/5572-the-condominium-law-time-to-get-organised.html
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very interesting read !!!
Ron
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I thought I had read somewhere that this only applied to properties where there were more than 8 units. Not sure if this is correct or not reading the article.
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We are in the process of setting up a committee to comply with this act .
We are aware of the basic procedure of the act but we are being asked question by owners that we are unable to answer so far I have drawn a blank with research.
I was wondering if any owners can answer some of these question :
Such as if and when the act is going to be enforced ? ???
We know we need to arrange a meeting of owners to get the ball rolling but some will not be able to attend the meeting so will require to vote by proxy.
Do we need to go to the notary first ?
Any feedback would be appreciated
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Hi Patrice,
We set up our comittee last September. I believe it is current law so is already current act and in force. I think it has been for some years but only recently come to the forefront. Infact the first post is from 2011.....and it has been in existance before that.
you will need to hold an extraordinary meeting first of all offering 2 dates for owners to attend. This is to meet the legal requirement that if someone cannot meet one date (the majority) you offer a second date. If you all chat to eachother in England (guessing most owners may be British) the first date will probablly be ok. You need the majority (80%) at this meeting to be able to set the yearly meeting date which will then be the same date each year. Most management plans that builders have automatically make the 1st Jan every year as the meeting date. So you need 80% of the owners to agree to the new annual meein date to get it changed. Ours is now 2nd of May every year and will never change. You do not need to go to the Notary before hand....what I have learnt (and Im no expert, but picked up as Ive gone along) you need to:
1. send invites to all owners for an extraordinary meeting. The reason its extra ordinary is because your calling it outside the standard 1/1 each year date (that funnily enough, none of us Brits ever knew about) You can do this via email invite for who you are in contact with. If you have Turkish owners or other nationalities on your complex and have their email address you can invite the same way. IF people dont reply to your email invite. You need to send the equivelent of a recorded delivery letter to their apartment on your complex in Turkey. This prooves you have sent an invite and will be good enough in Turkish Law that they were sent an invite. If people choose not to reply, you can evidence that you asked them. Their vote automatically goes with the majoriy vote in the whole process and they cannot complain when you agree things without their presence......thats why its important to show you have invited them with documentation to that fact.
2. you send the invites with the dates shown. there is a basic form of yes I will be attening myself ...or no I cant attend but I give (whoever you nominate) my vote (proxy or POA) at the meeting. Any one can be their POA for the meeting. They can nomnate or leave it to be nominated on the day. For example. I own our apartment with my other half. We can represent our apartment BUT can also represent one other apartment each. So the 2 of us could represent 3 apartments in total with the other owners consent.
3. at the meeting........what I did was speak to 6 owners in England by phone ( were a complex of 10 so already had the majority vote)) and agreed the date. Then we put in black and white what we wanted as owners on the complex. The act covers so many things that are important like.....all staying the same colour as a building, no pets, no buisness to be done from apartments without prior agreement fro all owners, the list was exhaustive, but basically we wanted a neat and tidy complex without a brothel or kebab house being opened on site.......sounds daft but you would be amazed what can happen!!! the act does cover all this though. But what we decided wa to highlight this in our meeting minutes (called the resolutions book)
4. we decided what we wanted in our resolutions book. It covered who we were using as a maintainance company, that we all agreed to stay with them, that we all agreed to pay on time and if we didnt there would be a financial penalty and or court action. Any improvements agreed by the majority and when to be paid by. Any non payers would be taken to court. This was written in English by myself and then translated in Turkey to turkish for the notary.
5. once you have had your meeting get it stamped down at the notary, they take a photocopy...so its legal !!!! You will need to have a manager and inspectors and they have the power (once nominated) to make complex descisions without having to ask all owners. Example. We needed new covers round the pool cause the old ones were dangerous. " 2 of us on the complex are inspectors and have permission from the other owners to make descisions for the whole complex. WE agreed to have them replaced from the communial budget.
We have also opened an account for the complex owners where we have all put in £100 each for any court matters to take people to court or any unforeseen emergencies....we got a tax code for the complex to open the account and put itin our resolutions.
6. so every year the meetings should be easier and easier. We have no topics for discussion next year so our resolution book will probably read.1. remai with same maintainance company. pay on time and all prevous rules and standards still apply........ this will be cheap as chips to get notarised as it will only be a page.
hope this helps a little :)
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Thank you for your very informative post.
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bless you janmack....thank you :)
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Karenr - with your post you have demonstrated how wonderful this forum is ;D
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Agreed, fantastic effort and just to help others.
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Very detailed Karenr - it certainly makes good informative reading, thanks
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Karen, ref point 6; if there are no major decisions made at your AGM, you don't need to have the decision book notarised, so you'll be able to save a few tl
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Thank you so much Karenr for all the updated information very much appreciated :)
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thank you very much for that info karen, hopefully should make our meeting very simple. x
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I will add my thanks to the others. This is the best and most concise summary I have seen. Really helpful!
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I dont pretend to be the expert and I am still learning as I go along......but having our comittee has made people (including Turkish owners) pay up....as once your a legal recognised committee , any owner on the same complex dosnt stand a chance of not paying and the court WILL always find in the complexes favour.... thanks to the Condiminium Act in turkey...
liz101.....thank you for that....but I would rather pay for a few lines and get it stamped every year :) s
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You can probaby see from my posts that the reason I set up, and got going our committee was because of non payers (that were renting out their aparments all summer and not paying the yearly fee)it really cheesed me off that they rented ALL summer and didnt pay a penny to the communial fees, the pool fill, the daily gardner....but were pocketing big cash from renters.......so enough was enough and after being a recognised committee...... they have all paid up. :) happy days... ;D
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Hi Karen
Did they pay up everything they hadn't paid previously, or they started paying up for now and future?
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Not wishing to butt in but just thought I would add that our Committee (with Liz 101 as our trusty font of all knowledge) took the non-payers to Court, indeed one resident has now been taken a number of times, and we WON. And yes Keith, we got the back pay as well! Ours has been a long, long journey and when I remember the early days, I never thought we would be in this position.
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Not only did we win Lynne, but got all the court costs too ;) It was a bit disappointing last year, as our fully paid up member of the awkward squad paid up as soon as we sent him a 30 day warning letter, sent by mutlu post (the Turkish equivalent of recorded delivery) of course!!
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Hi Scunner,we had it all luckily.
Lynn, Would you mind telling me how long from sending a letter it took to get to court. Did you use a solicitor and what were the court costs. We have in our resolutions that all court costs will be met by the non payer if the matter gets to court.
Would be interested to know for future.many thanks in advance.
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Karen, myself & the site manager wrote 2 x chase letters, which we had translated into Turkish. The first letter we send is a 30 day warning letter, this is followed by a 7 day warning. We send them by the equivalent of recorded delivery, so there can be no arguement that they weren't sent or received & we keep photocopies of the letters on file.
If these don't do the trick, we take the photocopies & the postage receipts to the solicitor (he was most impressed!). Serving court papers cost 50tl 18 months ago, but may have increased since. In addition, once court papers have been served, even if the matter does not go to court, the solicitor charges 17% of the debt recovered & this is a set tariff, so you will need to add this to the amount you need to recover.
We have only got as far as the solicitor regarding the one Turkish owner (twice), as even the slower ones pay up either on letter 1 or letter 2. Clearly he's now decided to tow the line, since this year he paid on letter 1.
Our financial year ends 31st March & by the end of April, we had arrears of just 45tl; as this is split between 2 owners, we have decided to write it off. This is in marked contrast to 6 years ago, when we first went "legal", when arears ran into several 000 tl
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Just what I was going to say!
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....and me :)
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We have a situation in Ovacik where the developer still owns a number of properties on the site but we want to take control. Any ideas if this is possible?
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We have a situation in Ovacik where the developer still owns a number of properties on the site but we want to take control. Any ideas if this is possible?
What percentage does the developer own?
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As I understand it (and Liz101 is the expert not me!) no one owner can have more than a third of the votes - so even if he owned 11 of 20 for example he does not have a majority vote.
In fact, I think Liz told me that :)
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Well CBF has done it again, not only a very informative and useful thread, but it could not have come at a better time for me. Thanks all.
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Well CBF has done it again, not only a very informative and useful thread, but it could not have come at a better time for me. Thanks all.
Hi Pete :)We have a situation in Ovacik where the developer still owns a number of properties on the site but we want to take control. Any ideas if this is possible?
What percentage does the developer own?
Less than 50% not sure how much exactly
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It was a bit disappointing last year, as our fully paid up member of the awkward squad paid up as soon as we sent him a 30 day warning letter, sent by mutlu post (the Turkish equivalent of recorded delivery) of course!!
This comment did make me laugh as it seems every complex has their "awkward squad"...thank god it's not just ours ;)
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As I understand it (and Liz101 is the expert not me!) no one owner can have more than a third of the votes - so even if he owned 11 of 20 for example he does not have a majority vote.
In fact, I think Liz told me that :)
that is soo right.......so thats good for us English x
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We have a situation in Ovacik where the developer still owns a number of properties on the site but we want to take control. Any ideas if this is possible?
we had the same with 2 out of 10 that the developer owned........set up the committee and.......bish bosh.....they paid in full...... they have no escape when its legal....go for it. If you need any tips PM me.......I dont know it all but what I have done is now legal and there all paying.happy days
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Karen, myself & the site manager wrote 2 x chase letters, which we had translated into Turkish. The first letter we send is a 30 day warning letter, this is followed by a 7 day warning. We send them by the equivalent of recorded delivery, so there can be no arguement that they weren't sent or received & we keep photocopies of the letters on file.
If these don't do the trick, we take the photocopies & the postage receipts to the solicitor (he was most impressed!). Serving court papers cost 50tl 18 months ago, but may have increased since. In addition, once court papers have been served, even if the matter does not go to court, the solicitor charges 17% of the debt recovered & this is a set tariff, so you will need to add this to the amount you need to recover.
We have only got as far as the solicitor regarding the one Turkish owner (twice), as even the slower ones pay up either on letter 1 or letter 2. Clearly he's now decided to tow the line, since this year he paid on letter 1.
Our financial year ends 31st March & by the end of April, we had arrears of just 45tl; as this is split between 2 owners, we have decided to write it off. This is in marked contrast to 6 years ago, when we first went "legal", when arears ran into several 000 tl
thank you very much for this info...very useful and helpful
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1. send invites to all owners for an extraordinary meeting. The reason its extra ordinary is because your calling it outside the standard 1/1 each year date (that funnily enough, none of us Brits ever knew about) You can do this via email invite for who you are in contact with. If you have Turkish owners or other nationalities on your complex and have their email address you can invite the same way.
I would suggest that any meeting called by E mail is open to challenge as it is not one of the two formats stated in the act; indeed there is the question as to whether they are acceptable legally as a record in Turkey; its only relatively recently that were accepted by the UK courts.