Management Plan for my Estate

I bought a house in 2005 and now I received a letter from the builder of my estate stating:

To comply with our planning permission on the above estate, please note:

As and from January 2009 the residence of the above estate are responsible for the day to day affairs of this estate.

We have formed Management Company Ltd who will be responsible for the day to day affairs of this estate.

Residence should appoint a management team to run the said company.

We would recommend that each house pay 150 euro per annum.

All cheques should be made to the Management Company.

Could anyone explain how to go about this. Why should I pay this fees and what happens if I wont pay it? How they came up with the figure?

It is my first house and I don't have any experience/knowledge when comes to mgt companies.

Thank you.

The builder's involvement in maintaining the common areas of the estate is coming to an end and they want to hand over to the residents. So they have set up a company in the residents' name to hand over to. The fees will be used by the company to perform that upkeep and probably a certain amount for things like getting the accounts audited and submitted.

That is kind of it in a nutshell but it does seem a little bit odd the way they are going about it. You would expect to receive an invitation to an AGM where the new board would be elected (currently the builder and A.N.Other is probably listed with the CRO as directors of the company) from the residents. If I were you I would be insisting on their organising an AGM which you can then attend and allow the transfer to occur. I would also be requesting a breakdown of that proposed fee detailing how they arrived at that figure.

You can request details from the Company Registration Office website (www.cro.ie), this should tell you who the company is and who it's directors are and any documents that have been submitted to the CRO.

OP, you should consult the contract(s) you signed when purchasing the property (talk to your solicitor if in doubt) which should have detailed the plans for the ongoing maintenance and "day to day affairs" (whatever that means) of the estate (council hand-over or private management company).