How can we make developers pay management fees?

[NCarraway]

Hi There,


I am an apartment owner living in Cork. I purchased my
apartment in July 2003. Although the building where I
am living is complete, the developers are still on
site finishing another building with plans to build
more; they have not handed over control of the
management company yet. We formed a residents'
committee with other owner-occupiers in November 2004
because we were worried about the poor quality of the
maintenance of our building and the site in general.
We were also worried about the fact that the
management company had never had an AGM. We finally
received some satisfaction and the place has improved
since.

We also had an AGM last year. However the AGM
could only supply an incomplete set of accounts and it
was revealed that the management agency had a very
poor record of when the apartments had been bought
from the developers and who had bought them.
Additionally, the current management agency only took the
contract in May 2004 and all accounts preceding this date
are very poor indeed. The management company is
heavily in credit as a result. The developers seem to
owe alot in management fees for both the apartments
that they took a while to sell and apartments that
they have rented. The management agency has tried to
calculate the amount that they owe, but due to poor
records they cannot. The developers have either kept
bad records or are withholding information. This means
that we are constantly in debt, despite paying our
fees on time (€1,000 per year) and that we are not
receiving the service we expect from the management
agency as a result. We have issues regarding security, fire safety, illegal dumping and lift maintainance to name but a few.

Is there anyway we can force the developers to disclose complete records, or any way they can be penalised for keeping poor records? Are there any bodies in place that can force the developers to pay management fees?

 

[dam099]

Who were the directors of the management company during the time poor records were kept? The directors of a company have a duty to ensure that proper records were kept. If they were not then you could possibly contact the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE). If control has not yet been handed over then I'm not sure what you can do about the other issues.

 

[NCarraway]

Thanks Dam099,

The directors would have been the developers, their employees, their accountants and their solicitors as far as I know - it wasn't any owner occupiers anyway. If we do lodge a complaint and the ODCE investigate, would they penalise the management company as a whole or just the directors? If the latter was true I'd lodge a complaint immediately, but if the former were true, then any fines will have to be paid from our management fees - this will make a bad situtation worse. We want the accounts to be run properly, but we don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot either.