The Olomouc council today approved the sale of the remaining 114 cooperative apartments to their tenants. Already in July, representatives approved the sale of the first batch of apartments. Tenants will pay a total of CZK 50 million for all 355 cooperative 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 cooperatives that were established in 2000 due to the failure of construction companies. The city then decided to save the project and cooperatives were founded.
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 of the Jižní housing cooperative will pay an additional CZK 2,421 per square meter, for the Jiráskova cooperative, the surcharge is CZK 3,246 per square meter.
Tenants will be able to buy this share for an additional fee after the housing cooperatives are transformed into joint-stock companies and their property is transferred to the city. The council approved the establishment of an association 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.
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. However, he pointed out to the representative that tenants overpay for the use of cooperative apartments after 20 years.
The overpayment should be resolved after the housing cooperatives are transferred to the city. The representatives instructed the councilors to prepare a proposal for the settlement of the rent paid after the twenty-year period from the signing of the contract for cooperative apartments. Mayor Miroslav Žbánek (ANO) told representatives today that in the fall it should be clear how the overpayment will be handled.
Source: CTK
