Factoring
Factoring providers are someone you appoint to manage repairs and maintenance to your block of flats this usually applies to flats of 4 or more in a tenement block. Providers will charge you a monthly or yearly admin fee. This fee is for admin usually for contacting all the owners to carry out repairs, issuing bills and collecting money from all owners they also carry out inspections of the property common parts annually.
Understandably people can try to do repairs on tenements themselves, but you need the written permission from every owner and health and safety can prevent you from carrying out repairs as every single person in your tenement would be liable in case of an accident or damage being caused.
We use under one roof for all aspects of advice for factoring and tenement repairs. Please look at the website link below for any advice you may require.
Owners Associations
An owners’ association is a formal arrangement between the owners of your building. It arranges regular meetings to discuss how your building will be managed and maintained. By ‘formal’ we mean having a constitution, an agreed set of rules and procedures.
Advantages
Having an owners’ association has a number of advantages, even if you have a property manager:
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if you want to open a Maintenance Account, the bank may insist that you have a constituted owners’ association
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research indicates that owners’ associations make owners more satisfied with the way their flats are managed
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it can make speedier and better decisions
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it gives leadership to the repairs process and encourages active participation
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it provides a single source of contact and better communication
The rules
The owners’ association rules should cover:
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the purpose of the association
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who can be members
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subscriptions
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office bearers
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how meetings are conducted
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finances
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how to make changes to the association rules
Decisions
The owners’ association can make decisions about:
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appointing or changing property managers
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‘House Rules’
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getting regular surveys carried out
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planning repairs and maintenance
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which contractors to use
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arrangements for saving and paying for repairs
Office bearers
Depending on the number of owners, you should have a committee headed by a Chairperson, who is supported by a Secretary and a Treasurer. The Chairperson should be your best leader and someone you trust to speak up for you. The Secretary should be a well-organised person who is responsible for all your record keeping. The Treasurer should ideally know how to do spreadsheets, so that they can keep track of money coming in and going out.
If you have enough owners, other committee members can help with other tasks and it’s a good idea to spread out and rotate tasks, so that everyone gets a chance to gain experience and no one person is over-burdened. You don’t want to be in a position that, if the key person leaves, the whole association collapses.
Draft Tenement Bill 2026
Scottish Parliamentary Working Group on Tenement Maintenance
In Scotland, there are around 895,000 properties legally defined as tenements. A tenement is any building or property that has been divided horizontally. Around a third of tenement flats were built prior to 1919, another third between 1919-1982, and the final third after 1982. Many tenement flats are in a state of critical disrepair, particularly those built before 1919. More information on the current understanding of building condition can be found here.
The Scottish Parliamentary Working Group on Tenement Maintenance
The Scottish Parliamentary Working Group on Tenement Maintenance (the Group) has been meeting since March 2018 with the purpose of establishing solutions to aid, assist and compel owners of tenement properties to maintain their buildings.
