Unfair monthly maintenance fee charged in AP
With urbanization being the new mantra and land prices skyrocketing, it seems that living in an apartment is the new valued preposition for modern India. Especially in cities like Hyderabad and Secunderabad, those are considerably affected by the Telangana issue staying as a community is more secure.
However, like me I am sure many more of you staying in a lower SFT (Square feet) apartment, are facing problems with high maintenance fee. I write this article as an attempt to address this issue and hope to find a solution to this problem from your valuable advice.
Being a resident of a lower SFT apartment in the metro city of Hyderabad, I and some of my neighbors are victims of a discomforting situation where we pay maintenance fee same as the higher SFT apartment owners. We strongly believe that this is not fair and lots of other apartments in the city also have the same problem.
Maintenance fee issues for lower SFT apartment owners:
– There is no maintenance fee difference between the higher SFT and lower SFT apartment owners. This is done to reduce finance complications for the Apartment Association.
– Most of the lower SFT owners are from a middle class and a low income sector; they are being burdened by the increased maintenance charges of the flat.
– Most low SFT owners feel that the maintenance fee imposed on them is an act of injustice.
– Apartment Owners Associations discriminate between the lower SFT owners and the higher SFT owners.
Based on the socio-economic background of a person the government of India has established various types of apartment complexes 
segregated as LIG, MIG and HIG with similar type of construction based on the section the complex falls under. Here, the possibility of collecting maintenance charges uniformly is possible, as the groups are clearly segregated and depending on which group you fall under, the maintenance fee will be decided.
But due to the lack of space in metropolitan cities, this system is not followed and apartment complexes are constructed with a cluster of variations as One, Two, Three and Four BHK flats. This makes the process of maintenance fee collection much complicated and this kind of system does not work for the modern apartment complexes and modern life style, especially in metropolitan cities.
Questions raised by the lower SFT flat owners:
(1) Why are only 2-3 people living in a higher SFT flat?
(2) If the flat is locked for a period of 3 or 4 months, can the association stop charging the monthly maintenance?
(3) Is it fair to charge equal maintenance fee, regardless of the type of flat you own and the number of people staying in the flat?
(4) Are the resale, rental and property tax values the same for higher and lower SFT flats?
(5) Is the financial status of all the owners the same?
(6) Why are only the monthly maintenance charges equal for all the owners of an apartment?
(7) When the higher SFT flat owners are willing to pay hefty money to own the flat, why are they not willing to pay a little extra towards monthly maintenance?
Our appeal to the government:
Lower SFT flat owners are demanding the government of Andhra Pradesh to issue operational guidelines for Apartment Owners Associations, so that fair policies are maintained in favour of owners in the apartment complex.
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CF User: Dr. D Chinni Krishna*The content of this article is user generated and CommonFloor.com does not take any responsibility nor guarantee toward the facts and figures mentioned in the content of this article.
