Residential Plazas and Maintenance Fees in Islamabad

Even if you are an owner of your own flat, you live like a renter as you end up spending a fortune in the name of maintenance fees. And these fees are like unlimited elastic as they keep growing and growing and you have to pay them otherwise the body of plaza can evict you.

Yes that’s right and that is why I say that you never feel like an owner. The maintenance fee or strata fee is meant to be only for common areas and stuff the building. But if you go through any such plaza of Islamabad or even Karachi or Lahore, you would clearly notice the neglect. Residential Plazas and maintenance fees in Islamabad is a real painful issue. In addition of paying bills like electricity, gas, water, taxes, you also have to pay these maintenance fees.

You would feel better at least if you had seen any improvement in the building but no sir, you don’t see any work being done. From leaking parking lot roofs to leaking water pipes, from gas leakage to overgrown lawns, from dysfunctional lights to cracks in building, you get nothing get done despite of repeated complaints and reminders. If you escalate the matter to CDA or LDA or KDA, they simply shrug it off. Where to go for justice?

My friend lives in one of residential plazas in F 11/1 and its every day misery for her. Nothing gets done and her maintenance fee has just been increased from Rs. 5500 to Rs. 7500. She rang the maintenance number and asked the reason and got an earful. She is seriously thinking of selling her apartment and just go back to renting. It’s such a headache to be an owner occupier in Islamabad especially when it comes to high rise building flats.

Do you know who owns these buildings?! Been witnessing all of this from so many years now. No one, including CDA does anything about it. First CDA should attend to service road west F11 , when a Capital city can’t make a decent road and let mafia override them what can we expect, the road is like playing a video game and you go by avoiding and dodging things coming at you , dangerous.

If you are thinking about buying a flat in Islamabad, then before proceeding anywhere if you are to be owner then please do yourself a favour and read once more the SPA terms. Usually in JOP an OA consists of owners look after properties maintenance etc. That’s mostly for common areas as described above.