Apartment residents receive a monthly management fee statement listing specific items and amounts such as cleaning fees, repair and maintenance fees, long-term repair reserves, and common electricity charges. But many residents of multi-household and multi-family dwellings commonly called "villas" do not. Going forward, villa residents will also be able to receive breakdowns of their management fees.
The Ministry of Justice said on the 26th that at a meeting of the "task force of ministers on special management of consumer prices," it announced a plan to improve the system for management fees for non-apartment housing.
The Ministry of Justice viewed that small-scale dwellings such as multi-family dwellings without an appointed manager are highly likely to raise management fees as a workaround instead of rent.
The Ministry of Justice conducted a fact-finding survey from Nov. last year to Jan. this year on residential officetels nationwide and small residential collective buildings in Seoul.
A survey of 47 residential collective buildings in Seoul with fewer than 50 households found that where there was no manager or the manager was unknown, management fee details were never disclosed. Where a manager had been appointed, the disclosure rate for management fee details was 87.5%. Among cases where management fee information was disclosed, 78.9% of residents said the fees were "inexpensive or appropriate."
At a mixed-use building in Eungam-dong, Eunpyeong District, Seoul, there was no elected manager, but one resident was communicating with the consigned management company without consulting other residents. When another resident demanded disclosure of management fee expenditure details, this resident refused. At a multi-household dwelling in Sinsa-dong, Eunpyeong District, Seoul, each household had a different exclusive area, but a flat 15,000 won per month in management fees was collected.
Based on these fact-finding results, the Ministry of Justice decided to revise the law so that residents can receive management fee breakdowns regardless of the type of dwellings they live in. By amending the Housing Lease Protection Act and the Act on Ownership and Management of Condominium Buildings, residents will be able to request management fee details from the landlord or the manager.
To enable systematic building management, the ministry will also ease the notice method for convening management association meetings, which is the procedure for appointing a manager, and relax the voting requirements. It also plans to create a new authority for local government heads to conduct administrative investigations into collective buildings with 50 or more independent commercial stores, separate from the number of households.