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FOREWORD
Dear friends and property owners,
Do you have an interest in creating a property owners association? Here you can find some relevant information.
Creating a property owners association in your country can help you to:
- promote and defend and property owners’ rights,
- to represent your interests in the national and international field,
- to provide guidance and information about property problems, and
- organise a reaction from you and your fellow property owners towards national authority actions.
Although the right to property is an internationally acknowledged human right, in many countries, real estate property owners have no representation, no defence, and hence, no voice.
Below, you will find information on how to create a property owners association in your country and become a member of the International Union of Property Owners (UIPI) which will represent your interest on the European level.
For more information please e-mail us at office@uipi.com.
How to do it?
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A property owners organisation is a non-profit association of any physical or legal persons who are owners or managers of any type of big or small real estate property, such as houses, shops, offices, other commercial buildings, warehouses, or simply land. The usual founders and members of such associations are renting landlords who have problems with their tenants, with state rents regulations measures, with high income taxation upon rents and/or heavy capital taxation upon the value of real estate property, also with any other legal restrictions, obligations or requirements which burden the owners of real estate property.
One of the founding members must be a lawyer, who will draft a text of the statutes of the property owners association. According to the national law, the statute should be deposited to an official authority, or approved by the court. After all the formalities are concluded and approved, the new association is ready to apply for membership to UIPI.
The basic goals of the property owners association will be mainly the following: defence of private property rights in the national level, in government, regional or local authorities and courts. UIPI team will investigate the problems of its members and will pursue to all appropriate actions to promote and defend the members’ interests. Another core goal is information & support to members (namely, personal oral advice, by lawyers, engineers etc. written general advice, circulars, models of contracts, later a triannual or monthly magazine, etc.). UIPI represents a stronger voice for the property owners of the country, nationally and internationally. And finally, UIPI wishes to have a consistent and continuous presence in the media.
In the very beginning, when you will have only few financial means, the new association will NOT need a separate office or secretary. The office of the lawyer who will be usually the Secretary General of the association will serve as your initial office and seat of your association. There you will need a telephone line and a fax machine with the capability of batch sending your press releases to all the media (main newspapers, radio and TV stations of your country). The lawyer’s office will mainly be the “Information Office” of the organisation. Any property owner or manager who needs information concerning his property problems (which are mainly legal), or just wants to become a member of the association, will go to his office, where the lawyer will collect his contribution and register him as a member, and then answer his questions without charging the member. This will be a free service to the members, and will not include further legal actions, for which the member will have to pay to the lawyer his regular fee. This will also lead to a specialisation of the lawyer in property problems, which will be very useful for all your members, to have a faithful and well-informed property lawyer to defend their rights. Of course, later this situation will evolve according to the progress of the organisation. But this is how even the biggest European organisations have started, some of them more than one century ago!
After your association has been officially created, you can apply for membership to UIPI. You will send to the President and the Secretary General of UIPI a copy of your statutes, a list of the members of your administartion and a written request for membership. You will be informed about your annual contribution to UIPI. The president and one of the members of the administration of your association, who will be elected as member of the Executive Committee, will be invited to participate to all the “Events & Meetings” of UIPI. The UIPI organizes at set intervals its International Congress, you will be invited and where your association will be able to participate with a large number of your members.
To get an idea of the mission, role and function of a national association of property owners, in English language, please visit the websites of:
The National Landlords Association (NLA), UK
The Irish Property Owners Association (IPOA) , Ireland
The Hellenic Property Federation, Greece
For more information please e-mail us at office@uipi.com
