How to form an Owners’ Association
Our handy guide on how to get your property’s owners organised
Start the conversation
The first step to empowering the resident’s of your building is improving communication.
It is extremely difficult to change property factor if you don’t know or talk to the residents within your building. Luckily one of the wonders of the 21st century is social media. By putting a system such as Facebook into place and setting up a group for your building, or even simply posting a letter in their letter box, you have taken the first step to improving the dialogue.
It won’t happen overnight, but advertise your building’s Facebook group via your noticeboards and watch the numbers grow and the conversation start.
Visit How to Create a Facebook Page to get started and create a group for your building!
Find like minded individuals
Post at least once a week in your group, perhaps local news for the area, a gripe, opinion, anything to encourage participation.
From the social melting pot you created, like minded individuals will emerge. People that care about the community, people that care about the building and people that want to make a difference. Be patient, this can take some time.
It won’t be long before you have some fellow volunteers.
Make it official
So you have your eager, potential association members to hand and a dream of an official association. Now it’s time to get the votes in, dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
To form the association you will need a meeting, during which there will need to be a vote to form an official association. You can then form it. It’s that simple. Check your deeds to see how many votes are needed. Create your constitution and voila!
There is an excellent (but old) guide to forming a resident’s association that you can download here. Read between the lines, the author knows his/her stuff well, but perhaps complicates the process somewhat. Remember it’s slightly different to an owners’ association but the principals are the same.
Time for change
With the official committee formed and ready to get to work. Consult your Deed of Conditions for the rules on calling a meeting of owners’ and once the meeting is in place, you can now make decisions backed by your community, as a group you are now capable of improving your building, empowering your residents, setting up a sinking fund, perhaps even changing your factor to a company that has high ethical standards and an enviable code of conduct.
Need Advice?
Just need advice or help understanding your deeds? We can help!
We are always happy to provide free advice on matters of factoring, forming your association and any other related enquiries.
