Owner’s Association

Sooner or later all foreigners owning an apartment in Turkey will have to face it: The Owner's Association.

The Owner's Association (Kat Malikleri Kurulu) is an administrative entity which has its legal foundation in the Apartment Rights Act also called the Apartment Regulations. The Association's objective is to manage and keep in good repair a building that consists of private and communal property components according to the Apartments Regulations.

The Apartment Regulations also apply to private dwellings belonging to a project style residential park. It is important not to confuse this type of association with associations based on the Turkish Association Act, the so called Dernek.

A lot could be written about the Owner's Association but I will limit this story to a number of amendments to the Apartment Regulations which were introduced on 14 November 2007.

1. A finished apartment building which is divided into private ownership units has to be transformed into housing units and has to be registered at the Tapu office as 'dwelling' (= kat mülkiyet) within 1 year of receipt of an ISKAN, also called yapı kullanım izni, under penalty of a fine for the entire building.

Every member of the Owner's Association must carry out the necessary actions and payments at the request of the administrator or one of the apartment's owners to enable the board of the association to complete registration at the Tapu office. Uncooperative apartment owners risk fines of 1000 YTL per apartment he owns.

The clerk at the Tapu office will send a copy of the new Tapu certificate to every apartment owner after the building has been registered as 'housing units' (kat mülkiyet). This makes very-little legal difference to the owners but they will have to pay more property tax to the Municipality.

2. Another important and fundamental change relates to apartment owners who don't pay maintenance money in time, don't pay at all, don't behave appropriately or don't comply with the association's administrative rules. Legislation has tightened regulations regarding owners who misbehave or deliberately refuse to pay maintenance money and has improved opportunities to take legal action against these owners. It is now less problematic to publicly sell the apartment of a misbehaving owner by intervention of a judge.

3. The previous Apartment Regulations did not include the possibility of establishing an Owner's Association for dwellings in residential housing parks that are part of one project but are legally situated on separate lots and sections. Lack of jurisdiction regarding this created practical problems such as not being able to collect maintenance money. The current changes enable owners of houses or buildings on separate lots and sections to join in one Owner's Association. I think this is a welcome relief for residential parks in particular.

4. The last notable change relates to building projects of several apartment buildings or several residential parks on separate lots and sections. Legislation not only provides for the administration of Owner's Associations for the same building but also for different types of administration such as administration per island (ada) and administration per several buildings (toplu yapı). These types of administrations must communicate and act according to the legislation. A general members meeting per ada and per toplu yapı must be held biannually.