Co-ownership: “Unable to have €20,000 for renovation, I am forced to sell my home”

TESTIMONY. Once the dream of home ownership has been realized, it’s time for life as a co-owner, with its daily hassles and real hassles, sometimes. Example with Sophie, forced to resell her apartment because she was unable to pay for a facade renovation which should have taken place much later.

Capital Video: Co-ownership: “Because I don’t have 20,000 euros for the renovation, I have to sell my home”

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When she bought her apartment nine years ago, in Seine-Saint-Denis, Sophie didn’t imagine selling it any time soon. “I had just retired at the time, I had deliberately chosen a ground floor to stay there for a long time”she explains. It was without counting renovation of the facade of the buildingwhich will intervene much earlier than expected, damaging its finances. The renovation, one of the heaviest co-ownership works, should take place “in just five or six years, when I will have barely finished paying off my real estate loan»says Sophie. A reimbursement which does not allow him to put money aside because of his “little retreat”she emphasizes. “As I do not have the means to put 20,000 euros into the renovation of the facade, I will have to sell my apartment and start renting againshe regrets. And I’m not the only one in this situation within the co-ownership”.

When Sophie bought her apartment, renovating the facade was absolutely not on the agenda. These are work poorly done and left behind which today require programming. “A year and a half ago, new co-owners arrived, Parisian bobos who wanted to undertake major co-ownership work by claiming to know how to do it. To convince the hundred other co-owners to vote for them, they really lobbied them, in particular by providing a whole host of services to the elderly.she relates. Effective lobbying since major work to repair cracks and infiltrations in the facade of the building was voted on at the general assembly.

The limits of a voluntary trustee

But the volunteer trustee and the online trustee service platform, on which he relied, were not equipped to manage such work. “The online platform only had lawyers, no technicians. Its experts therefore did not not properly diagnosed the problems with the facade»laments Sophie. Consequence, “the cracks were simply filled with silicone, which will not last long. And some work was not completed by the construction company, whose workers also climbed into baskets without being strapped in.she testifies. This unfinished work and not carried out according to the rules of the art has done more harm than good to the facade. Which will therefore not be able to avoid a real renovation in the very next few years. The young retiree is all the more upset as the trustee allocated the works contract to the building company without first putting it into competition with others. A trustee who also flirts with nepotism, one of his parents working in the company in question.

Sophie had, however, tried to alert the other co-owners of the risks of moving from a professional trustee to a voluntary trustee accompanied by a simple internet platform. But “the majority of co-owners were attracted by the cost of the platform, 12,000 euros per year, three times less than a professional trustee”she explains. The young retiree regrets “these antagonisms between co-owners attached to their real estate assets and supporters of lower-cost services, who are often landlords and not owner-occupiers”. Especially since it involves penny-pinching savings, the online platform having increased its price by 50% after its first year of operation within the co-ownership.

If you too would like to share your difficulties as co-owners, do not hesitate to write to us!