Перегляд вихідного коду сторінки Rabkrin (eng.)

===6. Apartment buildings as integral property complexes. Condominiums. ===
Miserable condition of apartment building management and a poor percentage of the condominiums created is a logical result of the situation, when co-owners lack rights-setting documents even for their shares, and moreover lack of documents for the whole property. 

As a result of an openly populist 1992 law “on privatization of the state housing fund” , apartment buildings were legally transformed into a collection of separate apartments, cut off from the building as a whole, and from land parcels, upon which they stand. 

This happened on the background of 1989 - 1992 period when a resolution of Ukrainian Soviet Republic government “on regulations for selling flats from state and public housing fund, their maintenance and repair" of 19.05.1989 №142 (it was quite good, even though it didn't resolve the land issue as in 1989 there was no private property rights for land), which introduced: 

• buyout (not a free giveaway) of flats by residual value;

• issuing the rights-setting documents, where an apartment was defined as an ideal share of the whole housing estate;

• ordering the plan of the whole building in the technical inventory offices;

• creating associations of individual owners of apartments for effective maintenance of buildings using collective management;

• all owners bear obligations on maintenance, repairs and overhaul of the house and grounds in proportion to the living area of their apartments.

And only by decision of the Constitutional Court of 02.03.2004 all the apartment buildings were recognized as integral property complexes, and the owners of all the premises recognized as co-owners of the estate in general, and the law of Ukraine “on OSBB” (condominiums) recognized the right of the condominium as a legal entity to get the land, upon which the building is located, and the adjacent grounds into permanent use or property. But this right for land is practically a fiction, as it is the discretionary power of the local authorities to give this land, and they are not interested in a free giveaway of the land, especially in the centers of big cities.

But it was too late. A great quantity of attics and cellars, which should have belonged to the co-owners as common indivisible property were unlawfully proclaimed local communal property and alienated. At the moment each court has hundreds of cases where tenants demand returning these premises, and proceedings will last forever, as by p.4 art. 268 Civil Code of Ukraine, the limitation of action does not cover demands to recognize a governmental unlawful act, which damages one’s property right. Also the adjacent grounds, which are inseparable parts of many apartment buildings as integral property complexes but not allocated specifically, in recent 15+ years were developed a lot, and this “legal bomb” would explode during defining specific borders of lands, which will sooner or later start.

Since 2004 nothing was done to implement the decision of the Constitutional Court — no changes to the Civil Code or to the Law of Ukraine “On condominiums” so that at least the legal condition which existed in в 1989-1992 could be reinstated. Apartment buildings, despite common sense, are not registered in technical inventory bureaus as integral property complex, and its lands and adjacent grounds are registered by other bodies (land resources administration). So it’s no surprise that a lot of apartment buildings are not registered anywhere at all. Thus the level of formalization in this segment of equity (most part of equity in Ukraine!) reaches around zero.

This problem should be also solved on the legislation level — with a simple implementation of the world experience, adapting to Ukrainian reality. In legal sense, joint owning of an apartment building is not different from joint owning of a car or an apartment, because a number of co-owners is not important really. Meanwhile, as any management theory states, the more the number of joint owners is, the more complicated taking decision on control and usage of the object would be. But current legislation suggests only inapplicable algorithm for making decisions by co-owners of apartment buildings regarding usage and maintenance issues.