Unpaid condo refurbishment fees - obligation after many years?

[MJKT2014]

Recently our condo (with new juristic management) presented me with a bill for unpaid refurbishment of the condo public facilities. Besides monthly services fees occasionally we get billed for a refurbishment at an irregular interval, depending when refurbishment is required which seems to be every 4 to 5 years for major items like the lifts or swimming pool.

 

I was surprised to be shown this year an unpaid bill for me from 12 years ago? I only live about 2-3 months in a year at the condo. I think the bill was lost in the condo admin as I was never told about it over the years by the juristic office, and I have paid interim refurbishment bills since then.

 

Even though I paid it was there any obligation for me to pay a bill that is 12 years old when I was never shown it at the time and only made aware of it this year do you think?

[torturedsole]

How much are we talking about?

[kingofthemountain]

If you was the owner of the condo at the moment when the refurbishment was done

you have to pay it, doesn't matter if you was in Thailand at the moment or not

your appartment (And it's value) has indirectly beneficied from the work.

Maybe you wasn't in Thailand at the moment where the bill was presented for payemnt

and later the managment has forgotten to ask you again for the payement. It happens.

The new management is probably ''scanning'' all the old bills unpaid, trying to recover some money.

It seems it's not easy for the management to be paid, a lot of foreign owners are abroad

(Particularly at the moment where they can't even comeback in thailand) and the Thais owners

seem to ''forget'' to pay and still wait the last last limit to do it (Or even never do it)

So yes you need to pay or they could sue you in court for that if it's a big amount.

[Catkiwi]

When did you take ownership? What year? and as https://forum.thaivisa.com/profile/323397-torturedsole/ has asked, ...how much???

[Catkiwi]

11 minutes ago, kingofthemountain said:

If you was the owner of the condo at the moment when the refurbishment was done

you have to pay it, doesn't matter if you was in Thailand at the moment or not

your appartment (And it's value) has indirectly beneficied from the work.

Maybe you wasn't in Thailand at the moment where the bill was presented for payemnt

and later the managment has forgotten to ask you again for the payement. It happens.

The new management is probably ''scanning'' all the old bills unpaid, trying to recover some money.

It seems it's not easy for the management to be paid, a lot of foreign owners are abroad

(Particularly at the moment where they can't even comeback in thailand) and the Thais owners

seem to ''forget'' to pay and still wait the last last limit to do it (Or even never do it)

So yes you need to pay or they could sue you in court for that if it's a big amount.

Ok, yep all clear now...??? <deleted>!!

[impulse]

Does the debt attach to the unit itself, or to the owner of record at the time?

 

More precisely, is a new owner on the hook if there is a debt when the sale closes, or is the juristic required to collect the debt from the former owner if they didn't file a lien on the sale and collect at closing?

 

[Langsuan Man]

In order to register a condo with the Land Office you must present a form from the Condo's Juristic Person that states that all bills and obligations for the property have been paid

 

Once you get the Chanote in your name the land office is certifying that the property is free and clear unless their is a lien against it, which of course will be written on the back of the Chanote  

[scubascuba3]

13 minutes ago, Langsuan Man said:

In order to register a condo with the Land Office you must present a form from the Condo's Juristic Person that states that all bills and obligations for the property have been paid

 

Once you get the Chanote in your name the land office is certifying that the property is free and clear unless their is a lien against it, which of course will be written on the back of the Chanote  

He owned the condo at the time of the original bill

[kingofthemountain]

27 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

He owned the condo at the time of the original bill

Langsuan man replied to the post just above from Impulse, who is not the OP

and was coming with a different question from the OP request

[scubascuba3]

9 minutes ago, kingofthemountain said:

Langsuan man replied to the post just above from Impulse, who is not the OP

and was coming with a different question from the OP request

Ah maybe if he'd quoted the post it would have been clearer

[MJKT2014]

Yes, I owned the unit at time of refurbishment of the public area and I have paid it as I don't want issues going forward and to the condos credit they waived the acquired late payment fine which would have quadrupled the cost.

 

** My question was simply is there no limit to the time of invoice being shown and obligation to pay? In this case it was 12 years before being shown the invoice.

[kingofthemountain]

1 hour ago, MJKT2014 said:

 

** My question was simply is there no limit to the time of invoice being shown and obligation to pay? In this case it was 12 years before being shown the invoice.

As far as i know there is no time limit.

 

[dsj]

Shouldn't your refurbishment be covered by your annual Cam fees (Common area management) and the juristic/committee should budget for it?

This is what we do in our Condo and we had to replace two of the elevator slings, in which we budgeted for as well as improvements to the pool area.

[jojothai]

The condo juristic management has an obligation to pursue all outstanding bills from any coowner.

If you are a coowner you should insist that they do so. It is on your interests.

Whether there is a time limit under the laws i am not sure, but i know that in my condos the management has pursued long standing debts against units and sucessfully won in court. It took a long time.

[jojothai]

8 minutes ago, dsj said:

Shouldn't your refurbishment be covered by your annual Cam fees (Common area management) and the juristic/committee should budget for it?

This is what we do in our Condo and we had to replace two of the elevator slings, in which we budgeted for as well as improvements to the pool area.

If there were refurbishment charges they would have to be confirmed at general meeting, and notified. They are normally charged as an additional item because they cannot be classed as the standard CAM fee unless they are added on by increasing CAM charges permanently which has to be agreed at AGM with i think a much higher quorum than the routine AGM.

The OP hasnt said whether the charges were  from agm and notified  however i doubt that the new management would be pursiung it if there was none.

[jojothai]

There are some elements of routine maintenance normally in the CAM budget, but refurbishments are not. They are usually subject to details for proposals and costs, that have to be agreed at a coowner general meetong

[natway09]

If you owned the condo at the time you are liable.

Lucky you have water & electricity still on.

In our condo block they would have been cut off after 6 months non payment

[BigStar]

5 hours ago, MJKT2014 said:

Yes, I owned the unit at time of refurbishment of the public area and I have paid it as I don't want issues going forward and to the condos credit they waived the acquired late payment fine which would have quadrupled the cost.

 

** My question was simply is there no limit to the time of invoice being shown and obligation to pay? In this case it was 12 years before being shown the invoice.

Why should you imagine there was a time limit? The refurbishments were made, others paid your share, you benefited from a refurbishment that would cost more today. So yeah you need to pay. They waived the late payment fine, so you have no complaints except they'd failed to notify you at the time. Surprise. Their bad; it happens. But now they notified you and it's over.  

 

I once had to pay a 300 baht charge to TOT from 6 years previous or else they'd cut my line. SOP.

[fvw53]

In our Condo we have the situation that because of negligent Juristic Person Manager(s) some co-owners did not pay any debts (common fee, penalties, special funds) during many years, some more than 10 years.

When summoned in court by a new and active Juristic Person Manager those scoundrels use a lawyer and always see their debts reduced to the last 5 years based on the Thai Law on debt collection dd 3 May 2558 (2015)

[MJKT2014]

10 minutes ago, BigStar said:

Why should you imagine there was a time limit?

Well I was thinking presenting an invoice for something that was done 12 years ago seems somewhat unfair. Others (not me) may not have budgeted for such an incident. I cannot even recall the details of what I was paying for 12 years ago as memory fades and old age sets in - but I do recall something was repaired so I just paid up this year to clear my name. Certainly going forward I will be making a point of asking them directly for any outstanding bills they have not told me about once a year.

[BigStar]

1 minute ago, MJKT2014 said:

Others (not me) may not have budgeted for such an incident.

Possibly inconvenient, to be sure, but so many things happen to everyone now and then that he didn't budget for. Also we're not talking a million baht here. The project arises and the owners vote the assessment for it and they're not going to vote for some large unreasonable amount. The Thais certainly wouldn't vote for that, and getting big money of out of them would be a major headache.

 

So it was some reasonable amount that anyone could pay who can afford a condo and can afford to make use of it. In this case, it wasn't many others and seems not to happen often or you'd have heard about it. That should be reassuring. 

 

I would imagine that the news of the assessment was published in the minutes of the meeting at the time. So everyone should have budgeted for it then. It happened you didn't receive an invoice. But you'd kept your budgeted amount anyway of course. ????

 

[thailand49]

This is the problem with owning Condos here!  Poor management and then buyers don't demand to see what is the most important part the BOOKS!

 

I would ask the new management to show you the books 12 years back it should show you not paying along with those who had paid. Poor management which seem to be rampant in Condo they could have missed it and forgotten since you weren't in town much.  I remember years back my internet account I paid each month one day my service got cut off I went to the office show all my bills that I was updated they told me 9 months back I missed Nov?  I went through and sure enough they were right I said why didn't someone point it out I come in here monthly and pay. Answer this is Thailand!  If it was missed you should pay but from my experience majority of the Thai owners never pay their dues and if they don't chase them they should chase you.

 

In the end, while you are looking at the books I would examine what they are taking in and what they are spending it on a properly run condo the goal is to obtain a reserve the large the reserve the better run if they are coming every few years to get money as you noted something doesn't smell right.

 

[bkk6060]

Do the responsible thing: Pay it.

[kingofthemountain]

39 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

Do the responsible thing: Pay it.

As he has writed in his post number 11

(Around 7 hours ago) on page 1 of this topic

he has already paid it

you are right, i think it was the responsible way to go

[Mayhem11]

You are really asking a legal question. In Australia a debt becomes statute barred after 12 years.

[Max69xl]

20 hours ago, kingofthemountain said:

If you was the owner of the condo at the moment when the refurbishment was done

you have to pay it, doesn't matter if you was in Thailand at the moment or not

your appartment (And it's value) has indirectly beneficied from the work.

Maybe you wasn't in Thailand at the moment where the bill was presented for payemnt

and later the managment has forgotten to ask you again for the payement. It happens.

The new management is probably ''scanning'' all the old bills unpaid, trying to recover some money.

It seems it's not easy for the management to be paid, a lot of foreign owners are abroad

(Particularly at the moment where they can't even comeback in thailand) and the Thais owners

seem to ''forget'' to pay and still wait the last last limit to do it (Or even never do it)

So yes you need to pay or they could sue you in court for that if it's a big amount.

I hardly doubt they can go to court because of a 12 year old bill. What would the excuse for not handing him the bill 12 years ago be? 

[jojothai]

3 hours ago, thailand49 said:

In the end, while you are looking at the books I would examine what they are taking in and what they are spending ....

 

Since the new condo act over 10 years ago, all condos are required to post monthly accounts on noticeboard. All the condos that i know well do so.

There are still going to be the unscrupulous developers who dont, especially while they think they  can milk it during the period they own the committee and do as they like. Until coowners get involved with action to get an independent committee voted in.

[thailand49]

1 hour ago, jojothai said:

Since the new condo act over 10 years ago, all condos are required to post monthly accounts on noticeboard. All the condos that i know well do so.

There are still going to be the unscrupulous developers who dont, especially while they think they  can milk it during the period they own the committee and do as they like. Until coowners get involved with action to get an independent committee voted in.

Not sure what you are trying to say here!  regardless of the act like majority of the laws in Thailand there isn't any enforcement which is why things are the way they are if you have a rule and no one enforces it then it is useless which is why you are in the situation you are in now.  Since you brought it up the time you were in your condo did you ever see one posted? Sure there are unscrupulous developer the reason it is the buyer or buyer agent to make sure they take the time to obtain the rules for their clients but of course I can tell you first hand very few so call agents in Thailand even has a idea to doing so.

 

How do I know I had a broker license in the States although I didn't do this for a living I did it for family on the side to purchase property and manage it for them. Here in Thailand particularly Pattaya I have purchased a number of condo and the hardest thing is obtaining the rules and books when I mentioned it they just look at me. Most of them most likely your condo in the past did exactly that untrained poorly run and lack to a point of mismanagement which is the reason why I buy into is usually small the larger the condo the larger the problem even in the States in Thailand it is a nightmare. Every meeting I've attended it is a nightmare a condo with 200 owners there are at best 5 attendee I'm sure you never have attended one nor been involved the answer you gave me is the reason why they do what they do and get away with it.  Just pay up!

[MJKT2014]

15 hours ago, bkk6060 said:

Do the responsible thing: Pay it.

Yes I did. Also the condo did the reasonable thing by waiving the overdue fine which was triple the amount of the unpaid fee, since they had never informed me or given me an invoice before.

 

They also had already fired the juristic admin (who had made other misjudgements I was told) who first alerted me of this unpaid fee in letter demanding payment which included threat of legal action straight off the bat for late payment when there was no indication in the same letter of what it was I hadn't paid for, but that is another story!

[BigStar]

17 hours ago, Max69xl said:

I hardly doubt they can go to court because of a 12 year old bill. What would the excuse for not handing him the bill 12 years ago be? 

Amount would be too small. But normally what they can do is cut off the utilities to the condo. Most deadbeats will pay up when the threat is ready to be carried out.