A recent survey conducted by the social survey centre of the chinese youth newspaper revealed that only 5. 9 per cent of respondents confirmed that they had used the public maintenance fund in their district and 71. 3 per cent said that they had “no use”。
The public maintenance fund, also known as the “fund for specialized residential maintenance”, is the fund for maintenance and maintenance of public and shared facilities and equipment in residential buildings. The act on the management of funds for specialized residential maintenance, which was introduced in 2008, provides that owners of commercial dwellings shall deposit funds for specialized residential maintenance in accordance with the building area of the property they own. The money is equivalent to the “patient money” and “retirement money” of the house. However, the statistics show that the public maintenance funds paid in the country already exceed trillion yuan, with less than one per cent being used. Often, there is a lack of funding for urgent repairs, while maintenance money is “sleeping”. Why is the public maintenance fund difficult to use? During the visit to beijing, journalists found that the main reasons were the following:
Some of the accounts are unfunded. In some parts of the country, regulations have been insufficiently enforced, and in some of the older districts they were not perfected when they were built, resulting in uneven household payments and widespread non-payment of maintenance funds accounts。
In recent summers, it has rained, and many of the owner's houses in the tulip garden in beijing have been leaking and watering in the walls. They jointly presented the situation to the small property. Following a physical survey of the properties, it was decided that buildings 40 to 47, which were seriously flooded in the sub-region, would be consolidated to protect water, but the owners of those buildings would be required to pay for them. Why not use the public maintenance fund? According to employees of anti-assets services ltd., which was in charge of the district earlier in its construction, there were currently 47 buildings, of which only owners of buildings 1 to 8 had paid the public maintenance fund at 2 per cent of the total, making it difficult for owners who had not paid that amount at that time to make up for it. As a result, funds for the maintenance of other buildings are shared by each household。
The application process is complicated. In 2012, elevator maintenance was carried out in the second district of fungou park in the fong tai district of beijing, at a cost of over $600,000 from the district public maintenance fund. “the use of this fund is rare, as is the case for the whole of the treasury.” a staff member of the flank estates management company ltd. In charge of the district told the journalist。
In mid-2011, it was reported that the district elevators were not certified annually and that the property company and the commission had contacted the maintenance company for validation, which was calculated and decided to use the maintenance fund. In july of the same year, the company published the elevator maintenance programme for the advice of the owner. The management scheme requires that more than two thirds of the owners must consent to the use of the maintenance fund. However, at that time, low-level households did not agree to the use of the maintenance fund because of the infrequent use of elevators. Other owners have rented or had no long-term out-of-the-house connection, and others who have not paid their funds do not have the right to vote, which is particularly complicated by the request for advice。
After a full period of two months, more than two thirds of the owners signed up to use the maintenance fund and the property company will use the application to report it to the beijing city housing commission. It was not until july 2012 that the sector elevator maintenance was finally used。
Transfer and renewal difficulties. The management scheme provides that, at the time of transfer of ownership of the house, the funds for special maintenance of the house remaining in the account of the sub-household shall be transferred at the same time as the ownership of the house. The western city chain real estate broker, who had been trading for many years, told journalists that most of the second-hand house deals he had handled had not been transferred to the public maintenance fund. The management scheme also provides for the timely renewal of owner-occupancy bank accounts with a balance of less than 30 per cent of the initial deposit, but there is a lack of detailed implementation regulation on who organizes the transaction and what the renewal criteria are. The reluctance of some owners, especially second-hand owners, to renew them and the difficulty of unilateral collection by property companies resulted in inadequate accounts。
With regard to the difficulties in the use of public maintenance funds, the relevant experts of the chinese institute of real estate have recommended that the ease of use should be enhanced, based on ensuring the safety of their management, while increasing transparency and the participation of more owners, leading to effective management; the reforms should focus more on managing subjects and reducing barriers to use, with a view to exploring more rational patterns of management use。
