After five years of lawsuits, consolidation of cases and dragging and feet: the real estate inspector, Erez Steinberg, recently ruled that six owners of apartments in the Sharon Hotel in Herzliya, who did justice to themselves and decided to stop paying management fees in recent years - will be required to pay an average of NIS 33,000 per owner apartment, and in total in the total amount of about a quarter of a million shekels.
The ruling states: "The owner of an apartment has the duty to continue paying the maintenance expenses of the shared property
even if no services are provided to him
. "
What exactly is the story?
The Sharon Hotel is a hotel on the shores of Herzliya located on Ramat Yam Street and operates in a condominium, which consists of a hotel and an apartment hotel owned by the Sharon Hotel (through its parent company) and dozens of private apartment owners.
The Sharon Hotel also serves as the management company for the entire condominium and operates in accordance with agreed regulations registered in the Land Registry in the 1980s.
In total, the condominium includes 145 apartments in a diverse mix of 30, 60, 90 and 120 square meter apartments, with management fees calculated at NIS 450 per square meter per year, an annual amount ranging from NIS 13,500 per year for 30 square meter apartments to 54,000 per year for apartments of 120 square meters.
According to some of the owners of the private apartments, the condominium does not need hotel services such as contact services, reception, bellboy, etc., so for them all the charges for these services are nothing more than the hotel's burdening of expenses on the condominium in order to increase its profits.
The owners of the private apartments also claimed a serious conflict of interests between the hotel in its capacity as a hotel, and the hotel in its capacity as the management company, which they claim should serve the interest of the condominium as a whole.
The hotels and buildings in the area of the Arena Mall and the Marina in Herzliya (Photo: ShutterStock)
Hence, according to them, the representative office and the "Hasharon Hotels" company are acting against the interest of the condominium.
On the other hand, the representation claimed that since 2016 the defendants have refused to pay their share of the expenses, which in their view constitutes a violation of the rules of the condominium.
Following the conflict, some of the owners of the private apartments defended themselves and unilaterally announced that they would stop paying the full amount of management fees (in the period relevant to the claim, the payment was NIS 450 per square meter per year), and even demanded that management fees, which they claim were overcharged in the 7 years, be refunded The latter in the amount of hundreds of thousands of shekels.
The inspector of real estate registration accepted the claim of the representative of the condominium and the Sharon Hotel in full and rejected all the claims of the owners of the private apartments.
In a detailed and reasoned ruling that sets out the duties and rights of the owners of the rights in complex condominiums, such as the one in which the Sharon Hotel operates, the inspector stated that the owners of the private apartments do not have the power to change the unique nature of the condominium, on all the services provided in it in accordance with the regulations, including the services The hoteliers, not through changing the regulations by way of a general meeting of the apartment owners.
It was also determined that owners of private apartments cannot judge for themselves and determine the rate of management fees to be paid.
Thus, it was determined that if one of the owners of rights in a shared house has objections to the amount of payment of the management fees, he must first pay, and then apply in an appropriate petition to the inspector of the land, arguing that the management fees should be reduced - and this only for the reasons established by law.
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The clear decision in the dispute that was at the center of the ruling is relevant to over 100 owners of private apartments in the Sharon Hotel, but it is expected to affect any hotel format that operates condominiums, such as the Daniel Herzliya Hotel, the Ocean Suites Hotel, the Mandarin Hotel, the Carmel Hotel in Netanya, City Tower and more .
"The decision from standing went to a machine when it comes to a complex contractual relationship that prevails in a complex condominium where a hotel also operates," explains attorney Tomer Bar Natan, a partner in the litigation department at the Arnon firm, who represented the Sharon Hotel and the condominium's representative office. "The rules for proper management
of This relationship must be established in an agreed statute and recorded in the land registry.
With the registration of such regulations, any claim of an apartment owner that seeks to subvert the provisions of the regulations and change the unique character of such a complex condominium will be rejected.
Furthermore, Bar Natan noted that "during the procedure, about half of the apartment owners against whom the claim was filed, finally decided to pay their debt, which amounted to about half a million shekels, and therefore their claim was deleted by agreement. This, in addition to the 230 thousand shekels that will be paid to the condominium representative due to the latest ruling. In addition, there is Another lawsuit in the matter that was delayed until the judgment was handed down and is now expected to be renewed, unless the defendants are able to internalize the results of the current judgment and pay their debt."
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