Singapore, a small nation, is the greenest city in Asia. With 500 square km total area, the entire 5 million population is urbanized. More than 90% of the population own their homes, making it one of the highest ownership rates in the world. The majority of the country’s population reside in non-landed properties, like condominiums and HDBs.
HDBs are government-subsidized homes available only to Singaporeans and they are managed by the Housing and Development Board of Singapore. Condominiums are developed by private property developers and they can be purchased by both Singaporeans and foreigners. The HDBs contribute to 73 percent and the private condominiums 27 percent of the total housing stock in Singapore. Both the types of property have common facilities like garden, swimming pool, barbeque(bbq)pits, and gymnasiums, etc.
The facilities in Condominiums are better than HDBs, as the owners pay a monthly maintenance fee to their MCST for managing the condo. During the AGM, the council members appoint a managing agent for their property. The managing agent will assign a condominium manager whose role is to manage the property that includes the building maintenance, facilities management, housekeeping, security, collecting maintenance fund and sinking fund from the owners and also the accounting and billing of the payments on behalf of the MCST.
Though being the greenest city in Asia, the condos still use papers for their AGM reports. These reports have around 100 to 300 pages which most recipients hardly read. Studies show that the MCSTs spend around 2000S$ to 5000S$ annually for preparing, binding and delivering these reports to the recipients. For Printing AGM reports(once a year), invoices and statements(every quarter) and paper notices, a self-managed MCST or a smaller managing agent company will incur an approximate cost of S$4250 per year whereas a larger managing agent company that manages around 100 properties will incur an approximate cost of S$44160 per year (S$3680 per month).
Singapore Condos are now gearing up to reduce the avoidable usage of paper in below ways:
1) The monthly/quarterly Service charge invoices are printed in triplicate for each Condo. (36 per condo per year)
2) The monthly/quarterly service charge receipts are printed in triplicate for each Condo. (36 per condo per year)
3) Important communication is distributed as flyers along with Notices on the notice board (average 7 per condo per year). Data privacy and data protection cannot be ignored. While installing a software management system for your home, it is extremely important to be careful to understand if the chosen software complies with the data protection laws of your country. For more about ADDA Singapore, read ADDA,The FinTech Product for Singapore Condos.
Ref Article : Forum: Abolish the printing of AGM reports to save money, paper and energy