Buying my dream home, aka "worst case ever" - part six

There are the four units on the sectional title and I own unit 1, the chairman of the body corporate owns 2 and 3 and the man who owns unit 4 has left his wife for another woman but she still lives there. Judging from the behaviour she has displayed, I'm not sure why he put up with her as long as he did. They are both crooks, but she has an unsurpassed talent for trouble-making.

The body corporate is completely dysfunctional and always has been, due to the laziness and incompetence of its chairman. That suits me, because no levies are collected and everyone does their own thing. If we need to repair something communal, we discuss it and then I generally get it done and the others pay me back. When the drug-addicted loser that owned my place stopped paying regularly, so did Number 4. There were numerous meetings and resolutions about the communal billing but nothing was ever resolved and the obvious solution, to all get separate billing, appeared to be beyond anyone's ability to consider or execute. It suited the body corporate to have a communal payment system because he always underpaid and passed the charges on to everyone else. The arrears problem was ongoing from 2010 onwards.

Image: Pixabay
By time the bank repossessed my place in 2015, the arrears was over R200 000. When I moved in early in 2016, I had the electricity reconnected and thenceforth, I apportioned the billing. The arrears was down to R32 000, to be paid in monthly instalments by No 4. Despite all the promises from them, getting any money out of No 4 was extremely difficult and the woman made any excuse to pick fights and would withhold payment as punishment. I alternately ignored or threatened to sue her and pushed ahead with getting separate electricity and water connections. This took much longer than anticipated, as described here and here and caused me many sleepless nights.

When I informed the chairman that I would be getting separate water account, he tried to bully me into allowing him to connect his water supply to my new one, conveniently forgetting that under the current scheme of things, 1 and 2 shared one meter and 3 and 4 shared the other. He somehow thought that the council would accept it that one meter would simply be left unused and the past could be left behind by getting a new meter. He was also too lazy to go to the council offices himself and find a legal way to split the billing. There was a way, but it did require a third meter being installed, reflecting three owners. He acted affronted when I suggested that he contribute towards the costs of the third meter and refused to reimburse me monies I had paid in towards the sewer charges. He was content not to lift a finger to sort out the billing mess and wouldn't even have known where to begin so I decided to let him stew in his own juice.

Once the prepaid electricity was installed in December 2016, No 4 stopped paying altogether. The last time I bothered speaking to her, she claimed that I had told her that she needn't pay anything anymore. I managed to get my meter off the communal bill just in time and in November 2017, as I got my first massive account; the water meter that was linked to the communal account was cut, leaving No 2 without water. Because No 3&4's meter isn't currently being billed, they still have water. There was another round of "why me?" and "it's so unfair!" from the chairman and No 4 refuses to take his calls and he still hasn't been to the council offices to see what can be done. There is a solution, but it will involve effort and expense on his part. For the past 3 months, he has collected rainwater to use in the house and occasionally takes water from his tenant in No 3 when the rainwater runs out. He gets his laundry done elsewhere and perhaps he showers at work. The rainy season will end in the next 2 months. I've heard him exclaim about how much he's saving on his electricity bill now that he isn't using his hot water heater.

Due to the fact that no-one has come forward to sort out the arrears with the council, they have removed the disconnected water connection completely and if he wants his own water meter again, he is going to have to apply and pay for a new connection. As far as I know, he is unaware of this and unless he does reapply, he is now going to have to be linked to No 4 and no applications will be considered until the arrears is dealt with. In the meantime, I logged a query to get the missing meter relinked to the account and the missing year's worth of water billed to the account, and I am still trying to get the extra year's worth of electricity removed from the bill. Once the water billing is corrected, the council will cut that meter as well and that's when the fun will begin. My attitude is going to be "not my circus, not my monkeys". The chairman and No 4 deserve each other.

Next episode: the curious case of the leaking floor