Tenants of the city flats at 9, 10 and 11 Ibsenova Street in Brno are to pay CZK 250 million for the transfer of the flats into personal ownership instead of the CZK 158 million originally approved. This follows from today’s vote of the councillors, who cancelled the year-old intention to sell the flats for a lower price and approved a higher price according to a new expert’s report. Deputy Mayor Karin Podivinska (ANO) said it was necessary to create a new appraisal because the previous one was a year and a half old and did not correspond to the market situation, she said after the meeting. .
Helena Eklová, chairwoman of the cooperative the tenants founded to privatize the flats, called it a fraudulent act. According to her, a revision report should have been drawn up, not a completely new one. Moreover, over 70 families, the vast majority of whom are old residents or their descendants, are in a stalemate. In order to buy the apartments, they need a signed mortgage agreement from the city and a transfer at the land registry by mid-July. Only then would they be able to take out a loan from the bank, which has already postponed the expiry date of the loan framework twice by a year. “They won’t give in any further. We just can’t draw enough money to pay for the apartments anyway,” said Eklová. The cooperative took out a loan for CZK 100 million.
The city has already raised the price once, from 124 million to 158 million. People have been waiting for privatisation since 2013, when councillors approved the apartments for transfer to private ownership. However, the city has continuously postponed the sale.
Eight years ago, the tenants set up a cooperative just for the sake of privatisation, negotiating a loan with the bank. Many people, in order to have the part required by the bank from their own resources, took out loans or sold part of the property themselves. “The cooperative incurred costs related to privatisation of CZK 700,000. If we don’t take the loan, we will pay a fine of over 1 million crowns to the bank,” Eklová said. According to Eklová, it is unlikely that the transfer of the flats and the drawing of the loan will take place yet. That is why she wants to negotiate with the city to pay for the damages that have been incurred by the people and the cooperative and are still growing. She currently estimates them at CZK 2 million. “If the city doesn’t agree to this, there is no choice but for the cooperative to sue the city, and every tenant will sue the city as well,” Eklová said. Podivinska did not want to prejudge the lawsuit and referred to further negotiations.
The city’s actions have put the tenants in a situation where their apartments are in disastrous condition. The municipal district did not invest in them for years because it expected that privatisation would be a matter of one or two years and people would then be able to repair their own flats. The building has original windows from 1967, as well as electrical wiring and many other things. “Nowadays, even the municipality will not allow someone to replace the windows at their own expense. We’ve been through hell from the municipality and it’s an unbelievable waste,” Ekl said. And what people fear most now is that the city will sell all the apartments to a single bidder who would evict the current residents.
In addition, the sale was delayed last October by a police intervention at City Hall, where they took all the documentation for the sale of the apartments in question. According to Podivinska, the city has not received any concrete information from the police on how far the investigation is and when it might end.
Source: CTK
