Building management and common costs

Buying a flat in an apartment building also buys a share of common property and the duty to manage it together with the neighbours. That is not a formality: the management route determines the monthly figure, how quickly anything gets decided, and how the building will look in ten years. Lithuania allows three routes, and your building uses one of them.

What is common in the building

Common objects are everything that is not the inside of a flat: the structure and facade, the roof, stairwells and corridors, pipework and cabling beyond your walls, the lift, technical rooms, and the grounds with their paving. The Civil Code treats this as the owners' common property in undivided shares, with each owner's share set in proportion to the area of their flat.

Two consequences follow. You cannot decline that share or own a flat without it — it travels with the flat. And you cannot decide about the common part alone: glazing a balcony or changing a stairwell wall is a collective question, not a personal one.

Three ways a building is run

An owners' association is a legal entity of the owners, operating under the law on associations of owners of apartment buildings and other buildings. It has a chair, a board and its own account; the owners decide for themselves and answer for the quality themselves. The most flexible route, and the one that demands the most involvement.

A joint activity agreement is an arrangement among the owners to run the building together without creating a legal entity. Simpler to administer in a small building, harder once large decisions or borrowing are involved.

An administrator is appointed by the municipality where the owners have not chosen a route of their own. A company then runs the building at rates the municipality sets, against the list of mandatory works prescribed by legislation. This works without any initiative from the residents, but the owners decide less about what is done and how.

Common costs and the accumulated fund

The monthly figure is made up of several parts: administration, upkeep of the common areas and grounds, operation of the common engineering systems, electricity in common spaces, lift servicing, waste collection, and the contribution to the accumulated fund. Each part is apportioned on its own basis — usually by floor area, some by the number of flats or residents.

The accumulated fund deserves a closer look. It is the building's money for future repairs; the law requires it to be built up, and what has been accumulated belongs to the building, not to the owner. So a seller is not compensated for it, and a buyer entering a building with a thin fund takes on the financing of the works to come.

The owner's duty to pay does not depend on anyone living in the flat or on it being let. Arrears are the debtor's obligation, but in practice they become the buyer's problem too if they were not checked before the transaction.

How decisions are taken

Decisions about common objects are taken by the owners by vote, and the Civil Code sets the rules for counting votes and for when a decision binds. A decision validly taken binds every owner, including those who voted against it and those who did not vote. For a buyer that is the point: you inherit the decisions already taken.

Major renovation, insulating a facade or replacing a lift may be financed by credit taken on by the building. An instalment then sits on top of the monthly figure for years, and it travels with the flat to its next owner.

What to check before buying

Before the transaction, ask the manager or the seller: which route the building uses, what the usual monthly figure is, whether the flat is in arrears, how much has been accumulated, whether decisions about future works have been taken, and whether the building carries a loan. The arrears certificate wants to be as fresh as the register extract.

In a new building some of these answers are still forming, and the management route in the early years is often organised by the developer. Then a different question matters: who maintains the building after completion, and whether guarantee claims about common parts have an addressee at all.

This article is general information and is not legal advice. Your building's management route and payment rules are set by the owners' decisions, the contracts in place and the applicable legislation.