Leading legal consultant of INCOM-Real Estate legal service Kirill Kokorin answers:

The management company cannot be imposed on residents; they choose it at a general meeting and have the right to demand the fulfillment of those obligations, works and services for which the management company was involved.
If the meeting was not held or the signatures of the apartment owners were falsified by someone, this is a reason for inspection by the prosecutor's office and grounds for declaring the decision of such a meeting invalid. Unsubscribes and the lack of a proper response from supervisory authorities may be due to the fact that the fight against the Criminal Code is being carried out by residents separately on an individual basis. It is necessary to change tactics by choosing an initiative group that will include the maximum number of apartment owners dissatisfied with the work of the management company. Collective appeals, complaints, claims will have more tangible results. In addition, for the Criminal Code this will be a signal that residents are uniting, and there is a greater chance of collectively overthrowing an objectionable Criminal Code.

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15 articles about management companies in the housing and communal services sector

As for the improper operation of the management company: it is necessary to officially request from the management company documentation on the costs of maintaining and servicing your home (contracts, acts of completion of work, invoices and payments), and then check the reality of the execution of all work. In case of discrepancy, record this in acts signed by residents and send the corresponding claim to the Criminal Code. If you do not receive documents or answers within 30 days, you can safely send collective complaints to Rospotrebnadzor, the housing inspection and the prosecutor's office.

If collective complaints do not help solve the problem, the initiative group of residents can only convene a general meeting on the issue of changing the management company to another.

You can also consider the possibility of creating an HOA in the house. As practice shows, in houses managed by HOAs, all necessary work is carried out more efficiently, and funds are spent for their intended purpose. For this purpose, a general meeting of the residents of the house is also held, the chairman and board of the HOA are elected, after which the HOA is registered in the prescribed manner as a legal entity, opens a bank account and makes its own seal. Subsequently, the HOA board, acting on behalf of the HOA members, enters into an agreement with a reliable management company or exercises self-government by directly concluding contracts for the supply of utilities and other services, performing the necessary work in accordance with the action plan and estimate adopted at the general meeting.

A clean yard and entrance, snow removal in winter and landscaping in summer, well-kept playgrounds and comfortable benches - these are the merits of management companies (MCs) and HOAs hired by residents to manage the apartment building. The quality of these services is easy to control, but housing organizations have other responsibilities that apartment owners are not always aware of, the SGC press service reports.

The list of services that the management company must provide to residents can be found in the apartment building management agreement. Each apartment owner must have a signed copy of this document. If it is not there, this is already a reason to contact your housing organization.

In addition, you can check our list and evaluate how conscientiously the management company or HOA approaches its responsibilities.

Well-cleaned pipes in summer are the key to hot radiators in winter

The heating season in Siberian cities will soon end, but the specialists responsible for heating homes will not have to relax. Power engineers will conduct hydraulic tests of heating networks and promptly repair detected damage. Management companies in residential buildings should also perform similar work - wash and check the strength of the pipes in the house.

Management specialists must warn residents in advance about flushing and pressure testing of pipes, and also remind them that the radiators in the apartment must be left open at this time so that they can be washed.

Measures to regulate the amount of heat entering the house, for example adjusting the nozzles, are also carried out during the non-heating period. The resource supply organization (RSO) carries out the necessary calculations, taking into account the characteristics of the past heating season and changes in hydraulic conditions, and provides the management company with parameters that management companies should focus on when setting up in-house equipment. At the beginning of the next heating season, you can evaluate the effect and, if necessary, contact RSO for joint adjustment of the system.

Higher energy efficiency - lower heat charges

Few people know that management companies must annually give homeowners their proposals for energy saving. This obligation is enshrined in Part 7 of Article 12 of the Federal Law of November 23, 2009 No. 261-FZ “On Energy Saving and Increasing Energy Efficiency.”

Specialists develop such proposals taking into account the individual technical characteristics of the house. Representatives of the management company must provide residents with an estimate of the cost of implementing energy-saving measures, the amount of expected reduction in energy consumption, as well as the payback period.

After this, the owners at the general meeting can choose any of the proposed energy saving measures, decide on their implementation, determine the source of financing for the work and entrust their housing organization with their implementation.

A house in which energy-saving equipment is installed and there are no heat leaks will consume less energy - accordingly, residents will pay less for heating.

The principle of one window for meter readings

Here is the personal experience of the author of this article: in the house where I lived before, there was a single receipt for all services - from the management company. I checked the electricity meter at the entrance of the management company myself, and I only sent an SMS once a month with readings from hot and cold water meters. We moved, and now I pay 4 different bills and send meter readings to three organizations. One is electricity consumption, the other is water consumption, since cold water is supplied to my house by one company, and its heating and drainage services are provided by another. The house is on direct payments, this gives transparency and understanding of where my money is going, but I am always worried that I will forget to send something on time.

It turns out that even if the house is in direct payments with resource supply organizations, residents can transfer the readings to their management company. The law (Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation dated May 6, 2011 No. 354 and the Housing Code of the Russian Federation) obliges the housing organization to send data to the resource provider. To make this process simple and convenient, SGK recommends that management companies that accept meter readings from residents organize a personal account on their website, where residents can submit all readings online and receive expert advice.

Important point! Meter readings need to be submitted only once a month and to one place - either to the management company or directly to resource officers. Otherwise, incorrect data may enter the system, especially if readings are taken on different days.

But if residents decide to transfer readings directly to the RSO, it is best to use modern methods of transmitting readings - for example, use the mobile applications of SGK and Energosbyt. In this case, the process no longer looks so burdensome.

Where do you pay and go there?

In houses where residents pay for services provided directly with resource officers, representatives of some management companies send residents to resolve their issues regarding the quality of services provided on their own, with the words: “This is where you pay for your heating and water, go there.” At the same time, housing owners seem to forget that they themselves collect fees for managing an apartment building, and interaction with the resource supply organization is also their responsibility.

For example, if residents feel like they are freezing, the optimal order of interaction (in accordance with Russian Government Decree No. 354) will look like this:

1. The homeowner contacts the management company - by phone or in person.
2. The Criminal Code eliminates the possibility that the root of the problem lies inside the apartment itself and in the area of ​​responsibility of the residents themselves (for example, radiators may be clogged or do not correspond to the size of the room, windows and balcony doors may leak and lose heat).
3. The management company checks the in-house equipment and, if it cannot solve the problem on its own, calls representatives of the RSO - in our case, this will be the thermal inspection of the SGC.
4. A commission with representatives of the management company and RSO takes measurements of parameters at the entrance to the house and measures the temperature in the apartment.
5. If the temperature in the apartment is below the standard, then the commission draws up a report on the poor quality of the service provided (provided that there are no obvious violations in the apartment: clogged radiators, drafts, etc.) from the date of its visit.
6. The period of poor quality service is recorded in 2 acts - when the violation was discovered and when it was eliminated.
7. RSO, on the basis of acts, recalculates heating payments to the owner. Moreover, if it turns out that the violation occurred through the fault of the management company, it compensates the resource providers for losses, but the consumer is no longer involved in this.

In a similar way, you can solve the problem with the quality of water supply - temperature, color and other characteristics of water.

During certain periods, for example, in Krasnoyarsk during floods, SGK evaluates hot water quality parameters independently. And if experts record violations of acceptable characteristics, then recalculation will be performed for all houses with an open plan at the same time. In this case, there is no need to draw up separate acts for each apartment.

Warmth is a delicate matter

Fine-tuning the heating system so that the temperature in the rooms is comfortable and meets the standards must be done by specialists from the management company in the house itself. The heating network maintains the same coolant temperature for all houses, but the houses themselves are different - some require more heat, others less.

Moreover, in most houses it is technically possible to adjust the coolant flow through the risers of the heating system - this is an opportunity to adjust the indoor temperature in the entrances and even in individual rooms.

This could be one of the energy-saving measures described above.

What to do if the management company or HOA does not fulfill its obligations?

Every city has a body that regulates the work of housing organizations. For example, in Krasnoyarsk this is the construction supervision and housing control service (Stroynadzor).

If consumer rights are violated, the culprit will receive a warning or an administrative fine:

• for officials - from 500 to 1000 rubles;
• for legal entities - from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles.

But a fine is not always the worst punishment for a housing organization. Owners' dissatisfaction with the work can lead to complaints to the prosecutor's office, the city administration, and even a change in the management method.

The head of the legal department, Vladislav Frolov, answers:

Unfortunately, it is not clear from the question what form of management of an apartment building you use. If it is a HOA, a housing cooperative, a residential complex or a house council, a general meeting of members of the HOA, housing cooperative, residential complex or owners of premises is held, where a decision is made to contact the police with a statement to initiate a criminal case on the fact of falsification of the results of the general meeting on changing the Criminal Code. The chairman of the board of the HOA, housing cooperative, residential complex or the chairman of the building council contacts the police.

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It is also necessary to contact the prosecutor's office with an application to conduct a prosecutorial audit of the management company's activities. In addition, control over the activities of management companies is carried out by housing inspectorates and Rospotrebnadzor. If you receive replies from these organizations, you must file an administrative claim in court to declare the inaction of these organizations illegal.

It also makes sense to file a lawsuit against the management company for the obligation to fulfill the management agreement for the apartment building and to maintain the common property of the apartment building, to which the entrance belongs, in proper condition.

If your building does not have any of the above forms of management, first a general meeting of owners of premises in an apartment building is held, at which the House Council is elected, after which actions can begin.

Or the last option: if you cannot convene a general meeting, act personally. The fact is that the management company must enter into a written agreement with each of the owners of the premises in the house. However, the Criminal Code does not always do this. At the same time, since you pay for utilities, including the maintenance of common property, it is considered that you have entered into such an agreement with the management organization. And then you should act according to the algorithm I indicated. All applications will only need to be submitted in person.