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Dear Editor I hope you find this article interesting
It was recently reported on Property 24 that a very high percentage of Sectional Title Body Corporates haD more than half their owners in arrears with their levies.
Levies are used to maintain the common property portions of sectional title buildings including paying the insurance premiums. Having half of your owners in arrears means that the building cannot be maintained.
This is in sharp contrast to the situation at Platinum Global, Bloemfontein based property management agents. The company is able to boast that almost everyone of its 1000 plus sectional title unit owners is either up to date with their levy or actually in advance with levy payments. With the exception of one problem child all the buildings that the company manage are in a healthy financial situation with substantial reserves.
It is suggested that the attitude of the managing agents and trustees has a lot to do with this result. Although the company normally only takes on buildings that are in a poor financial state, strict enforcement of payment rules and legal action at an early stage has resulted in this exceptionally healthy financial situation for the buildings that they manage.
Said Mrs Jill Spencer Managing Director of the company; "There is simply no excluse for not paying your levy." If an owner is late or has not paid their current levy by the `1st day of the month they receive a reminder letter. If they are more than 30 days in arrears the necessary legal steps are taken straight away."
Jill went on to explain that while it was understandably difficult for owners to get up to date with their levies when they owed R '000s it was possible to recover the currently levies by attaching items such as TV's etc. As a result of owners knowing that serious action would be taken they almost invariably kept their levies up to date and the company experienced virtually no arrears in any of the buildings that it managed.
"Even one building that is owned mainly by people living on state pensions the levy debt situation is almost zero. On top of this we have turned around a deficit situation into a positive cash flow and have been able to undertake a number of maintenance projects in the building." Jill stated that being hard on levy defaulters was the job of the managing agents. Taking a soft line was not what the managing agents were paid for and simply allowed the situation to get worse as marginal payers followed the example of bad payers.
Platinum Global consults for sectional title buildings that are experiencing problems and guides them back to sound financial and management controls. This service is undertaken in all parts of South Africa.
Platinum Global can be contacted at mikehome@telkomsa.net
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