Co-ownership charges in Nice: what is normal, and what is not

What are your charges made of?

Two families, and mixing them up is the first source of dispute.

General charges cover the preservation, upkeep and administration of the common parts: syndic fees, building insurance, cleaning, routine maintenance. They are shared in proportion to the relative value of each lot, the value that takes account of surface area, position and composition. Every co-owner contributes, with no possible exception.

Special charges relate to collective services and common equipment: lift, collective heating, aerial. They are shared according to the objective usefulness of the equipment to each lot. The word matters: usefulness is objective, not declared. A ground-floor co-owner whose lot cannot use the lift does not fund its operation, and that does not depend on whether they use it to visit a neighbour.

This is where most of the anomalies we meet on taking over a building sit: an item filed under general charges when it benefits only some lots, or a distribution schedule never updated after a lot was divided.

How do you read a charge demand?

A charge demand is not an invoice, it is an advance. The general meeting votes a forecast budget each year covering expected running costs, and the syndic calls instalments against that budget. They fall due on the first day of each quarter, unless the meeting has set another frequency.

At the close of the financial year the accounts are approved and the instalments reconciled: you receive a balance to pay or an overpayment. A single charge demand therefore says nothing about your real cost; only the annual reconciliation does.

Not everything goes through that budget. Works and certain expenses are voted separately and called outside the forecast budget, on the schedule decided in meeting. A co-owner comparing this quarter's demand with last year's, without looking at what has been voted in between, almost always draws the wrong conclusion.

Why are charges higher in a seafront building?

We manage sixteen buildings in Nice, six hundred and eighty-three lots, built between 1873 and 1995. The gap with an ordinary co-ownership comes down to four items, and it can be explained.

The façade first. A building facing the sea takes salt spray continuously. Salt attacks renders, ironwork and joinery, and a façade needs redoing more often than three hundred metres inland. That is not a fate, it is a schedule: a façade kept up costs less than a façade caught up with.

The lift next. In a Belle Époque building the car is often old, sometimes original, and its maintenance bears no comparison with an appliance from the 2000s. Parts are made, not ordered from a catalogue.

The caretaker, where there is one. It is the heaviest item in a building that keeps one, and also the most visible day to day. It is discussed in meeting; it is not endured.

Heritage last. Mosaics, stained glass, an ornate stairwell: what makes an older building valuable demands upkeep that recent construction knows nothing about. It is precisely what the buyer pays for on the way in, and it would be contradictory to let it decay in order to hold a budget.

The works fund, and what the law now requires

Many co-owners discover this line without knowing it is compulsory. The works fund is built up by an annual contribution, decided in meeting, which stays attached to the building: on a sale the sums paid in are not refunded to the seller, they follow the lot.

Its amount has a floor. Where a multi-year works plan has been adopted, the annual contribution may not be less than 2.5 % of the works set out in that plan, nor less than 5 % of the forecast budget. Where there is no plan, it may not be less than 5 % of the forecast budget.

You can experience this as a constraint. On an older building it is rather the only way of avoiding the brutal call for funds that puts a co-ownership in difficulty and frightens buyers off. A building that provisions sells better than a building that defers.

Owner's charges, tenant's charges

If your lot is let, part of the charges can be recovered from the tenant, but only part. The list is set by decree and it is exhaustive: what is not on it stays with the owner, whatever the use.

The logic is easy to remember without knowing the list by heart. What relates to everyday use and minor repairs is recoverable: consumption, upkeep of green spaces, part of the caretaker's remuneration depending on the tasks performed. What relates to ownership is not: major works, syndic fees, façade renovation, replacing equipment.

A landlord therefore has two readings to make of the same statement, and it is a point on which well-run property management shows immediately.

How to check, and what to do if an item looks wrong

You have a right of inspection that goes further than reading the statement. The supporting documents for the charges may be consulted, under the conditions laid down by the regulations, and a syndic cannot refuse. Asking to see an invoice is not an act of distrust, it is how a co-ownership normally works.

Look first at the consistency between the distribution schedule and the reality of the building, then at whether an item is classified as a general or a special charge, and finally at how a line has moved from one year to the next. Three readings, in that order, are enough to spot the essentials.

If the distribution itself looks wrong to you, note that it can be challenged before the court, within five years of publication of the co-ownership regulations, reduced to two years from the first transfer for a newly acquired lot. After those periods the schedule stands, even if it is badly drawn. That point alone justifies reading the regulations when buying, rather than three years later.