Remember when they called China dystopian because of that picture of the highway that goes around a house where the homeowner refused to sell it? Or the picture of the houses in a mall parking lot which also refused to sell to the developer? Well luckily good old Freedomland has an elegant solution that upholds the rights of the homeowner way better than the evil XiSeePee!
That’s true if one person owns every other apartment in the building, but it could be the case that every apartment is owned by different people.
That’s usually the case here in Greece. No one owns the building itself and everyone pays a monthly amount towards the building’s utility bills (the costs of running the elevator, entrance lights etc). The larger your apartment the more you contribute. When the apartment is rented, the renter usually pays the bill, but when there’s maintenance costs involved (for example, the building’s elevator broke), the landlord pays that part.
I feel like there are so many ways to get scammed in this situation.
How so? You get a detailed bill each 2-3 months, and the percentage each apartment pays is always the same. It’s not a random dude pooling together money each month, there’s a detailed process involved. There are managerial firms that take over the process if the people at building decide so, at like 1 euro or so per apartment (per month)
The issues with this system are people not paying and that it’s harder to maintain the building before something breaks (plus “aesthetic” expenses, such as painting it) because people don’t want to pay more