The Olomouc City Council yesterday approved the sale of the first 252 out of 355 cooperative apartments to their tenants. The approved purchase contracts relate to the Jižní housing cooperative, where tenants pay an additional CZK 2,421 per square meter. At the September council meeting, the sale of the remaining hundred cooperative apartments of the Jiráskov cooperative is to be discussed with an additional payment of CZK 3,246 per square meter. They will pay a total of CZK 50 million for all 355 cooperative rental apartments, which is only a small part of the usual price of these properties calculated at CZK 1.2 billion. The money will go to cooperative apartments.
The city owns a two-thirds share in the Jižní and Jiráskova housing cooperatives, which will be transferred to the tenants without additional payment. The remaining third, which belongs to the cooperatives, will be covered by the future purchase agreement. Tenants will be able to buy this share for an additional fee after the cooperatives are transformed into a joint-stock company and their property is transferred to the city. Yesterday, the council approved the establishment of seven associations of unit owners, without which the transfer of cooperative apartments to tenants would not be possible.
More than 20 years ago, the construction of apartments began in Olomouc, which was partly subsidized by the state, part of the costs were paid by the tenants and the rest was paid in rent. “The contracts had a certain wording. That for 20 years we will repay something like a mortgage. And after twenty years the apartments will be transferred to our personal ownership,” said one of the tenants earlier. Cooperatives were created in 2000 due to the collapse of construction companies. The city decided to save the project, joined it and cooperatives were formed.
The tenants claim that they have been paying the apartments to cooperatives for 20 years and originally demanded that they be transferred without additional payment. In the end, even the legal representative of the tenants, Zdeněk Joukl, began to favor the option of transferring apartments with an additional payment, which was proposed by the city during the negotiations. Yesterday, he pointed out to the representative that tenants are overpaying for the use of cooperative apartments after 20 years.
The overpayment should be resolved after the housing cooperatives are transferred to the city. Today, the representatives therefore instructed the councilors to prepare a proposal for the settlement of rent paid after the twenty-year period from the signing of the contract for cooperative apartments.
Source: CTK
