For example, an en bloc office parcel
block could have little or no common
area at all within its own block and it
may be unfair to require the en bloc
parcel block owners to foot the bill
for maintaining the common facilities
located in residential towers, such as
swimming pool and gym.
A point to note is that the apartments
and offices shared the same weight in
computing share units.
Above all, the overriding principle in
determining maintenance charges shall
be that an owner only pays for what he
is entitled to use and vice versa.
The allowance of different rates during
management by the JMB will provide
for flexibility, and of course, safeguards
must be put in place to ensure that this
mechanism is not being abused.
The rates of maintenance charges must
be sanctioned by general meetings,
and preferably with the passing of
special resolutions.
When the SMA 2013 allows for the
imposition of different rates of
maintenance charges for developments
managed by the management
corporation (MC), the same shall be
applicable to developments managed
by the JMB unless there are valid
justifications not to do so.
After all, the JMB is merely the precursor
of the MC and will be succeeded by the
MC once the strata titles are issued.
The spirit of the law is to have a smooth
transition from the JMB stage to the MC
stage and not to create confusion and
dire ramifications.
How will JMBs be affected with this
ruling?
The case in the limelight at the Court
of Appeal is Menara Rajawali: a standalone
mixed-use strata scheme in a
single building block where facilities
are shared in common by all parcels
in the strata development. Hence,
the uniform flat rate of maintenance
charges applies fairly and reasonably
well to all the parcels based on their
allocated share units.
Generally, mixed-use strata schemes
are very diverse in nature with regard to
their development sizes, components
mix, numbers of building blocks and
large en bloc parcel blocks.
For the large and diverse mixeduse
strata schemes where highmaintenance
common facilities are
exclusive to certain component or
components only, the uniform flat rate
of maintenance charges cannot be
applied as it will be unfair to the other
components which do not enjoy such
common facilities. This may be further
complicated by large en bloc block
parcels in the mixed-use strata scheme.
The allocated share units generated by
the standard share unit formula in the
First Schedule of the SMA 2013 or the
Fourth Schedule of the Strata Titles
Rules, as the case may be, will not be
able to provide for a fair and reasonable
uniform flat rate of maintenance charges
in such cases.
Some of the JMBs in such large and
diverse mixed-use schemes have
passed “special resolution” under
Section 32 of SMA 2013 in conjunction
with the statutory by-law 4 of Strata
Management Regulations 2015 (SMR) to
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