Old-building major repairs pile on shared costs as the owners' corporation litigates and owners foot the bill

In a single old block nearly fifty years old, each owner was levied over HK$200,000 as their share of one major repair; afterwards the owners' corporation went to court suing its own, and after losing, the legal costs plus damages ran to six figures — ultimately still footed by all the owners. Local consumers report that old-building major repairs are often led by the owners' corporation in tendering and works coordination, yet owners have no real say over the contractor's background, the reasonableness of the quote or even the decision to litigate; once the corporation misjudges, the costs and mental strain are passed in full to the small owners.

The structural issue is that the owners' corporation, as the collective representative of owners, draws its funds from the owners pooling money together, so whether the litigation is won or lost, the damages flow out of the owners' shared account — tantamount to suing yourself and compensating yourself. Add to this that old buildings lack car-park and facility income, so repair costs can only be shared among residents, and the relationship between contractor and corporation is hard for individual owners to supervise, making disputes over unauthorised structures and scaffolding obstruction easy to inflate into litigation.

Against the backdrop of mandatory building- and window-inspection orders being issued one after another, the governance tensions over repairs in these ageing single blocks are gradually surfacing.