Out of the box

The Owners' Committee between law and reality

Ismail Al Hammadi

April 12 2022

Until this time, the Real Estate Regulatory Agency in Dubai is exerting its utmost efforts in establishing strong regulatory parameters for the real estate sector, befitting its global standing, and it varies between initiatives, circulars, laws and procedures, the primary objective of which is to regulate the real estate sector and work in it.

The Owners’ Committee, one of the points that the Foundation focuses on, is to activate the role of the owners and involve them in protecting the sector and their properties, but what is the committee’s role and tasks actually?

Among the duties of the Owners’ Committee, according to Article 24 of Law No. (6) of 2019 regarding the ownership of joint properties in the Emirate of Dubai: reviewing the annual budgets established for the maintenance of the joint property, and making the necessary recommendations in this regard. It also has the right to request financial reports related to the joint property Discuss the difficulties facing the management, operation, maintenance and repair of the common areas, and submit the necessary recommendations in their regard to the management authority or the Real Estate Regulatory Agency.

Among the eight tasks stipulated in Article 24 of the law, “the task of reviewing the annual budgets and financial reports related to real estate and making recommendations thereon” remains the most important task that must be undertaken by the Owners’ Committee, and proves its role as a defender of the rights of other real estate owners.

But what is baffling about the matter is that the Owners’ Committee as an entity, in law, does exist, but it is absent in reality!

Which leads us to ask several questions: Is the owners' commission just a legal procedure?

And what role are you currently playing?

And what should she provide?

And if it did not have a role in the real estate sector, why did it exist?

We have never heard of an official and public meeting of the owners' committees with the official bodies, during which the owners' conditions were discussed, and appropriate solutions to their problems were developed.

We have also never heard of a meeting of the real estate owners’ committees, and their making recommendations to the concerned bodies that would address the gaps that the joint ownership real estate suffers from, foremost of which is the service fees that have not known until today a compromise solution that serves the interests of the real estate unit owner, without harming the interests of the beneficiaries thereof. .

The Owners’ Committee also has a role in achieving a budget for the real estate sector, and it has a role in participating in making its path and revitalizing it, but this role is completely absent today, perhaps due to lack of awareness of its importance, or the lack of members’ dedication to it, and their lack of motivation to defend the rights of those they appointed with boldness.

You, as an elected member of the committee, have a full responsibility to take care of the problems of those who chose you for this membership, and you have to realize that your role is not limited to attending and listening only in periodic meetings and voting, but your presence calls for intervention and addressing thorny issues, proposing solutions to them, and conveying the investor’s voice to concerned bodies.

If you are not aware of the value of this membership, and this role, why did you find it in the committee then, and in general, if the role of the owners committee is not to seriously discuss the real estate problems and the problems of its owners, and put them before the concerned authority, what is its role?

And why did you find it?

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