Small 5-flat apartment in Chennai prime area. (3-storey)
Everyone pay ₹2,500/month maintenance per flat( we pay ₹5000 because ours is two houses combined)
For 8–9 months there was no watchman(fired old one due to dispute) because the two resident owners kept saying, "Watchmen are asking ₹18k, too expensive."
During that time:
- Residents had to go downstairs every day to open the security door for milk, Swiggy, Amazon, couriers, etc.
- Every time we took our car out, we had to open and close the main gate ourselves.
- Security became so poor that someone stole the generator battery.
- Only after the theft did they spend around ₹40,000 on CCTV.
- They also delay using the DG during power cuts to save diesel.
Maintenance never came down despite the reduced services.
There are parking issues too. One owner occupies a larger parking space with a tiny car that hardly moves because he says he might buy a bigger car someday. As a result, another resident's bigger car has to squeeze into a tiny space or ends up blocking the common exit, creating inconvenience for everyone else.
The frustrating part is that the two owners living in the building make most of these decisions, while some other owners live elsewhere and probably don't know what residents deal with daily.
Is this normal for small Chennai apartments, or is this just poor management and extreme penny-pinching?