Maintenance Paid at the time of agreement society again asking for maintenace

Question

► Hello, We bought a property in July 2023. At the time of agreement, we paid maintenance for 2 years to the owner of the flat, who is the landowner of the property. In January 2025, society issue maintenance notice for the period jan 2024 to Dec 2024. We reply to that notice by letter to inform society that we had already paid 2 years' maintenance to the landowner at the time of the agreement. After that, society asked us to give details about payment. We submitted the form, which was provided by the society, in which we had mentioned our flat detail, cheque detail, and who we paid, and we took his signature. After that, we started our regular maintenance from August 2025, and we regularly paing that. But now society is asking for old maintenance & its penalt.

Answer 1

Dear client,

It’s up to the owner of the maintenance to decide if you are entitled to use their money to pay for your maintenance. So as a general rule, you would pay maintenance to the housing society but only pay it to them through the landowner if they were authorized by the society to collect payment on their behalf.

You will have no basis for claiming that your payment to the landowner on 15th July 2023 is valid if the landowner has not been authorized by your housing society to collect payment on their behalf or your agreement does not state that the landowner must give money collected from you to the society.

If the landowner is not authorized and then does not give any of your money collected back to the housing society, then the housing society can issue you a maintenance bill because all flat owners must pay maintenance to the society.

Provided you paid with good faith and holding proof of your transaction such as checks and their signature, you should contact the society and inform them of your proof and request that they seek recovery of your payment from the landowner as well as remove the penalty assessed on your flat.

If your housing society continues to force you to make an unfair payment you may contact the Deputy Registrar of Cooperative Societies to report the issue.

If you have any queries please feel free to contact us.

Maintenance Paid at the time of agreement society again asking for maintenace

1 Answer