• @orrk@lemmy.world
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      1110 months ago

      ask yourself this: if the apartment is owned by a company who is in charge of bills?

      in the case witht he syndicate, the syndicate is in charge of the bills, the bills are split up among the members, this stuff all already exists btw.

      • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        No way, that’s cool! Where in the US?

        I guess I would’ve thought that the collective unit is in charge of stuff like property taxes, but you can’t have that many names on a property deed, right? Or can you?

        • @pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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          410 months ago

          Have you heard the term “Condominium”? Often shortened to “Condo”? Shared ownership, with an entity (usually organized as an HOA) shared by the owners who pay the shared bills.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium

          Very, very, common throughout the US, probably the most popular way of dealing with the issue of more complex land/ownership than “single building on plot all owned by one person”

          As the sibling post mentions, there are Housing Co-ops too, but, for example, if you wanted to get a low cost property in Florida, ideally with someone else doing the maintenance, but with you owning the property itself, you’ll almost certainly want to buy a Condo.

          • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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            110 months ago

            I suppose but HOAs are dicks. That’s a single controller. The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?

            • @pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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              310 months ago

              I suppose but HOAs are dicks

              HOAs are the name given to a type of legal association, there’s nothing in the law that says they have to be made up of “Karens” (and male equivalents), or even have the powers that you generally see in the suburbs.

              Additionally, for an apartment block, they literally can’t have the powers you generally see in the suburbs that people complain about. How are you going to paint the outside of your 3rd floor apartment? What grass do you need to keep short? How is the deputy chief officer of the HOA going to sneak into your non-existent yard and fine you for planting the wrong sorts of flowers?

              Literally all an HOA can do in this instance is pay for (and organize the) maintenance of common areas and pay the taxes. So for these kinds of situations, it’s a positive entity.

              The above mentioned many people paying into the fund for taxes but what if one does not pay taxes? Do the rest suffer?

              The HOA pays the taxes, you pay the HOA. If you don’t pay the HOA, then the HOA can get a lein on your property and ultimately force you to sell it, like a local government would if it was a single family home and you refused to pay your taxes. Which given it is, ultimately, levied for the same reason as local government taxes, seems appropriate. Do others suffer in the mean time? In theory, they could, in the sense that they’d have to pay increased HOA fees, but ultimately there’s no incentive to not pay the HOA, any more than there is to not pay taxes.

        • @5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          I only the know the version of that in Germany and Austria where the property is being held by a GmbH, similar to a LLC, whose half owned by an e.V., a registered voluntary association acting as the united juridicial person of the inhabitants and half owned by a syndicate e.V. that acts as insurance and solidarity among the syndicate and makes sure that no one can overtake and profit from the property. Inhabitants pay off rent-like loans and but can leave anytime. Rent is usually really low and acts as solidarity towards other houses.

          It’s called Mietshaussyndikat

      • @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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        210 months ago

        yeah the apartment I rent, bills are already separate so it wouldn’t be that different. We’d still all be paying the water company and power company. And for garbage. Like we already do.

    • @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      110 months ago

      bro a significant percentage of swedes live in housing co-ops, it’s literally a normal form of housing here, you’re not clever.

      • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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        110 months ago

        I get that my text came off as sarcastic. I wasn’t being clever.

        Let me retry:

        I think it sounds like a great idea but I have concerns such as, who will pay the community bills? Who will be in charge? And other related administrative duty questions.

        • @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          10 months ago

          Right, well again refer to the fact that this is a solved problem in many countries, including the US. Housing co-ops consist of a nonprofit cooperative organization that owns the building and then residents own the right to live in an apartment, which comes with a monthly fee for maintenance and voting rights within the co-op.

          It’s the same principle as HOAs owning and maintaining common infrastructure, just within a single building rather than a group of houses.