Important notice for housing schemes: CSOS payments due 31 March
Important notice for housing schemes.
The deadline is looming for community housing schemes like townhouse complexes, retirement villages and residential estates to register and pay their levies to CSOS.
“The Community Schemes Ombud Service is the property sector’s newest dispute resolution body,” says specialist sectional title attorney Marina Constas.
The deadline for registration and to have payments up to date is 31 March this year.
32 000 community schemes have so far registered. With 818 dispute resolution applications received in the last quarter of 2017, Constas, who is a director of BBM Attorneys and a CSOS board member, believes “that the organisation is making its mark, and encourages community schemes not yet on board to register now”.
Community schemes are all required to register with CSOS and pay a quarterly levy. “The deadline for registration and to have payments up to date is 31 March this year,” says Constas.
Elaborating on the dispute resolution process offered, and the costs, she says owners, tenants, bodies corporate, homeowners’ associations, share blocks and retirement villages may bring their disputes to the Ombudsman’s office.
“The Ombud will decide whether the dispute must be dismissed, mediated or arbitrated. If the matter goes as far as arbitration, then the arbitrator’s award can be made as a Magistrates or High Court order. It can be appealed on points of law. The fee for applying to the Ombud to resolve a dispute is just R50,” she says.
The fee for applying to the Ombud to resolve a dispute is just R50
“Once it reaches adjudication, R100 is payable. If the adjudication is outsourced by CSOS, the private adjudicator will be bound by a daily fee prescribed by CSOS. The CSOS amount payable is based on the development’s monthly levy approved at the AGM. The first R500 of the levy is exempt. Any amount over and above the R500 will attract a CSOS tariff of 2%, capped at R40 per month,” says Constas.
CSOS’s latest quarterly report provides some interesting insights into the complexity of community scheme living, and the role being played by the Ombud Service in making conflict resolution less painful and costly than it used to be.
“Disagreements are bound to arise when people are living in close proximity, and as could be expected, most of the cases handled by CSOS in the final three months of last year came from sectional title schemes. Most of the individuals who applied for dispute resolution were aged over 50,” Constas says.
Based on the CSOS report, the issues that proved the biggest problems for community scheme stakeholders between October and December 2017 were financial issues and disagreements about private and common areas.
Issues that proved the biggest problems between October and December 2017 were financial issues and disagreements about private and common areas.
She says since South Africa has the fourth highest concentration of community schemes in the world, the implementation of the Community Schemes Ombud Service is a very positive development.
“Once the service achieves its goal of becoming self-funding, it will be able to provide a truly world-class alternative dispute resolution platform, as well as education and consumer campaigns which will empower schemes, owners, trustees and directors, and which will ensure better access to justice for all,” says Constas.
Offering quality assurance of community schemes’ governance documentation is also an important aspect of CSOS’s role. This includes ensuring the quality of the rules of existing schemes and approving the rules of new schemes.
“Any unreasonable rules which are compiled by trustees will be scrutinised by the Community Schemes Ombud Service, which has the power to withhold a compliance certificate for the rules of the scheme. The legal office of the Ombud Service has indicated that any rules which conflict with the model rules will not be permitted,” says Constas.
Important notice for housing schemes
