Aidat and Maintenance of Residential Complexes in Turkiye
Whether you are thinking of buying a property as an investment opportunity or as your main residence, you will pay more than just your purchase payments and living expenses. Additional costs of owning an apartment are service charges for the maintenance of the common grounds and communal services. This maintenance fee (dues) is known in Turkish as AIDAT, divided between residents equally or by the size of the property they own, and generally collected as monthly or annual payments. To elaborate, if you are living in an apartment with 3 bedrooms, you might pay more than your neighbor, who owns a one-bedroom apartment.
What does the Maintenance fee (Aidat) cover?
Maintenance fees can cover a variety of expenses and services including;
• Cleaning, management, and general upkeep of the commonly used areas such as swimming pool, lifts, stairs, gym, lobby areas, hobby and meeting rooms, Turkish bath, sauna, etc.
• Technical maintenance and repairs, buildings' physical exterior
• Landscaping including sidewalks and garden preservation
• Caretaker services such as trash collection, snow removal, pest control, plumbing, etc.
• Security and reception services
• Management of legal and administrative affairs
• Regularly informing residents about the rules in the management decision book
• Common areas’ electric bills, (Sometimes monthly service fee includes electric use of the apartment as well. If electric is included, usually the maintenance fee is a bit higher in the summer due to air conditioning use.)
Since monthly service fees can vary from one complex to the next, you need to check the general service charges before buying the property in question. You can request a list of what the maintenance fees cover but generally, the higher the luxury, the higher the expenses rule applies on service charges as well.
In Turkiye, the monthly property maintenance services payments can vary from 200 TL to 1000 TL or higher depending on the luxurious services the complex offers. Even so usually real estate maintenance fees are affordable. While a complex with a property maintenance company will have higher apartment maintenance fees, without a doubt the complex will be kept better, and legal and administrative decisions can be carried out by professionals.
Complexes important announcements and debt notifications can be issued via website or e-mail in big residential complexes. Residents customarily prefer to pay dues by hand and get a receipt for their payments. One common way to pay complex dues is using the bank’s automatic payment instructions through the contracted banks of the management company. This way you don’t have to hold on to easily disposable papers in order to prove your payments if the need arises. Keep in mind that these systems can change between complexes.
Owner’s Association Meetings
Complex Management Firms or Owners Association is known as “Site Yonetimi” in Turkish. There are professional management companies that usually works with big complexes with many social features since the managers selected from the building owners don’t have sufficient legal information about government processes. Meanwhile, everyone who owns a property in the complex has a spot in the Owner’s Association and the meetings require more than half of all the residents to be at the meeting. The decisions to be taken in order not to disrupt the complex features are taken in these annual meetings. At annual gatherings these items are decided;
• Election of the new board members
• Presentation of last years accomplishments
• Upcoming years maintenance fee (aidat) raise
• Complex’s annual expenses and annual budget
• Planned improvements for the complex grounds
Every decision taken is written in the decisions book and all residents must obey the written rules and decisions. After the meeting, the decisions are announced to owners via mail, complex board, or website depending on how announcements are made usually. If some additional problems or changes needed to be made in the complex, there can be extra payments out of dues. Such occasions for instance can be painting the whole building, applying exterior heat insulation to the building, plumbing issues, etc. These extra costs are negotiated in annual meetings as well.
Our Advice about Maintenance Fees and Complex Management
At Nordic Trust Homes, we advise foreign real estate buyers to consider certain things;
Owner association’s managers can be changed annually. That’s why if someone is asking you for a maintenance fee payment, make sure that you ask for the receipt (known as makbuz) explaining your payment, the month of payment, and signature in detail. If the manager forgets the bookkeeping for your payment, you can present the receipt as proof of payment.
Pay the maintenance fee directly to the manager or authorized caretaker.
To control the fees you can ask for the decision book for your apartment. Decisions book must include the monthly payments and all the extra fees collected within that year. The manager must keep detailed information and receipts of any expense made for the complex.
The maintenance fees are independent of your problems with the complex or making full use of the facilities. Not paying your service charges on time is will not solve these problems, only create new ones. Make sure you pay your fees on time and look for solutions to these problems at annual meetings or by using complaint channels.
Because most of the foreign real estate owners don’t stay in their homes all year long, you can pay for the year of service in advance. If the maintenance fee is not paid in time keep in mind that the management will fail to pay for the social facilities, bills, or salary of the complex workers. The complex manager has the right to follow your debt by enforcement offices. Therefore, if you can keep good relations with the complex manager and let them know when you can pay or when you will be in Turkey for payment, generally they wait until your arrival for maintenance fees.
When making the payment, identify the purpose of the payment in Turkish or English, and do not forget to indicate the number of your apartment or villa, your name, and surname. This is of paramount importance if you delegate someone else to pay your aidat.
Please remember! Do not make payments to the personal account of the complex manager or his acquaintances. All payments must be made to the bank account of the officially invited managing company.
Buying a property in Turkiye is easy with Nordic Trust Homes. We will provide you with all the information before sale and we will continue helping you after sale too!
