Bias voting with proxy votes

I hope someone can help me here.

I bought a house recently in an urbanization. Last night I went to the community meeting (5 hours in length) and was appalled to realize one of the owners/comittee members has 40+ proxy votes which basically means he has control over the urbanization! In fact as he disagreed with the current President, this chap proposed, had seconded (by non attending owners) another president - a friend of his - which we found out doesnt actually live in the urbanization. This new president is apparently coming here to live in April.

This controlling vote is un democtratic as it is used in the interests of one party only and is not necessaril;y even the wishes of the majority as if they are absent they have no idea what is being discussed at the time.

I could rant on about this but does anyone have any similar situation and is there any law against this at all?

I think it may be the developer  who has a large number of  apartments on your complex. They may want to try and keep control of the community. I may be wrong. Can anyone add to this.

Westport

Good point Westport!

Maybe Rixxy could ask for the names..or some at least ,of the proxy voters and what apt they have.

Hi Guys - its not the developer. I am familiar with that scenario, but these are owners who all worked offshore in the same aranb state and who do not live on the urbanization.

This resident has their votes and uses them however he wants to - last night whilst there were around 30 other owners, anything we wanted if it diffrered from his opinion, was not passed!

It should not be legal to allow one person to hold the majority votes.

Hi Rixxy,

Yes, this can and does happen and is so infuriating!

Make sure that all of the proxy voters had FULLY paid up their community fees, because if they haven't then their votes are NOT allowed. You have to be a fully paid up member to be able to vote.

Kind regards,

Unfortunately all paid as well! I have heard there is a way around this and I will investigate this further.

When I used to represent owners myself, they would email me their issues to raise and tell me which way to vote - I was there on their behalf, but this guy just does what he wahts and effectively has 35% of the total votes!!!

There really are times when one would like to swing for someone isnt there - as if life here werent hard enough!

Hey ho onwards and upwards.

Thanks to you all for the support.

Oh that's a shame they had all paid.

We have had some motions passed in this way too..........and most of them were sh*t!   If you excuse the pun!

Good luck Rixxy, let us know how you get on and what the way round it is, if you get to find out, this would be of interest to a lot of community members.

Thanks for that! Yes where there is a will there is a way and boy I will find it. One kind owner rang me about it and is sending me on a website - apparently in these circumstances there are ways around. I will certainly share anything that works

Take care

 Community of 50 apartments a bank has claimed 23 from the builder as a debt. 27 other individual owners.

owners. At the AGM when voting how many votes will the Bank have if 7 other owners are not present.  

Hi Doedoe,

If all of the Developers unsold properties were still registered in their name at the point they were transfered to the Bank's ownership, then the bank would only be allowed one Vote for all of the 23 properties?

It maybe the case that the Bank purchased all of the assets of the developer but left them in the Developers name? This would save them considerable costs and further administration?

If it was the case that you were a private owner of more than one property the same voting rule would also apply, One vote onl.

In your caseif each of  the 16 Private owners attending or sending in a Proxy Vote could total 16 Votes, the Bank would have just 1 Vote at the AGM!!

Hope my reply helps?

 Hi Miket,

Many thanks for your reply. I will pass the information on to our President & Administration Company as they are under the impression the Bank will have the majority vote which is very worrying. 

Kind regards Doedoe.

Just to go back to Rixxy's issue - we had a similar scenario when a key-holder turned up to our AGM with lots of proxies.  We ruled that for future meetings all the proxies had to be sent personally by the owners to the Administrator or the President.  This means that the owners concerned had to tell the community directly who it wanted to be their proxy and it also gave the President the opportunity to communicate directly with the owner.  You can also try asking for votes on specific issues in advance, rather than handing that power to the proxy.

It won't address all the issues of large numbers of proxies being held by one person, but it does at least give the opportunity of direct links with those owners.

"If it was the case that you were a private owner of more than one property the same voting rule would also apply, One vote only."

Don't think so, Mike. Although I can't imagine a scenario where an owner of several units would vote differently for different properties, he would still technically have one vote per property. I'm not sure if the repeated use of question marks in your reply indicates that you are not sure about it?

The way I see it: assuming as we must (since there are private individual owners in the building already) that there exists a master deed for the entire property, detailing the "horizontal division" of the entirety, then even if the 23 apartments now owned by the bank are all on one individual deed, they would still constitute 46% (if all the properties were identical) of the total. The other 20 owners attending the meeting would only muster 40%. The important point is, that according to the Horizontal Law, for the adoption of most resolutions, all that is needed is the votes of the "majority of unit owners representing a majority of the assessment quotas" In other words, even if an owner, in this case the bank, only has one vote, that one vote may count for more than the one vote of an individual with just one apartment.

This message was last edited by Roberto on 07/01/2011.

Hi Roberto and Happy New Year,

I had the same understanding as yourself about Voting Rights for Multiple Owners until I was corrected by the Administrator at our AGM a couple of years ago.

A Reply from a Spanish Solicitor on a EOS "AGM Meeting Forum" wrote the following comments that to a degree supports what our Administrator advised me.

I'd be very interested to receive a definative answer to this point has I own 2 properties at our Development.

_______________________
www.fljordan.com

 Surly an owner with several property in a community complex can only have one proxy vote. The community administrator would also know the Name of an owner of each property by the NIE number, therefore, be aware that duplicate proxy forms from an owner would not count as multiple votes. 

And a very happy New Year to you too

Firstly, I wouldn't rely too much on what any administrator tells you - in my experience, professional competency is not high on their agenda.

Secondly, if a "proprietor owns more than one property he has just one vote even thought he shall have the sum of the ‘quotas’ of his properties" seems to say exactly the same as what I said, namely that it would be pointless asking him to vote seperately for each property, since it may be assumed that he will vote the same way for every one of them, BUT his one vote will represent whatever percentage the total assessment quotas for all his properties comes to. To then say that this "ensures that developers will not have effective control of the commonhold" however seems to completely contradict the first statement. With a bit of luck, Felix will see this and clarify what he meant. I can't work out how "the majority of unit owners representing the majority of the assessment quotas"  can be otherwise interpreted. In the case here, the bank may only have one vote, but it will still represent 46% of the quota. The other 20 attending owners may be the majority in terms of number of unit owners present, but they still don't hold the majority of the assessment quota. if on the other hand 24 other owners turn up, that would certainly clinch it on both counts!

 Hi All, many thanks for your replies  A VERY HAPPY  NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL XX