Should owners without a garage have to pay for garage doors?

Questioner

Our apartment complex of 31 homes also includes 10 detached garages. Some are owned by apartment owners and some were sold to third parties at some point. The 10 garages are legally incorporated into the VVE and the owners pay a (small) monthly contribution and have 1 vote in meetings. The deed of division does not provide clarity about the costs of maintenance of the garages. There is now a discussion about roof renewal and replacement of the steel garage doors. The owners of the houses (27) without a garage do not feel like contributing to that. Thank you in advance for your response, Kind regards,

Lawyer

I can imagine that this situation can cause a difficult discussion within your VvE. In general, there are different types of costs within a VvE. Some costs are for joint account; think of the maintenance of shared spaces, while other costs are divided based on specific users, such as garage owners in this case. If the deed of division does not provide any clarity about the costs of maintaining or replacing the garage doors and the roof of the garages, then a reasonable starting point might be that these costs will be borne by the garage owners, as they are the ones who have exclusive use of the garages. Please note that this is an exploratory advice and the final decision on this depends not only on the interpretation of the deed of division, but also on any legal precedents and the internal regulations of the VvE that may have included additional provisions. It may be advisable to seek legal assistance for this in order to avoid discussions with the other members of the VvE. -------------- Stichting Rechtswinkel.nl is a national organization with students and volunteers. The above advice is based on limited information and may be incomplete or even incorrect for your situation. Always consult a lawyer or attorney for your further steps. Read disclaimer: https://rechtswinkel.nl/disclaimer I would like to invite you to rate the above answer so that we can learn from your response.