"Establishment and Operation of the Apartment Audit Team" ... Changwon Special City Promotes Substantial Audits

Proactive Joint Housing Management Audit Promotion
"Housing Environment UP, Conflicts and Disputes DOWN"

Changwon Special City in Gyeongnam has established a Multi-family Housing Audit Team within the Housing Policy Division of the Urban Policy Bureau since January this year to protect the rights and interests of multi-family housing residents and improve management efficiency.

An Je-mun, Director of Urban Policy, is giving a briefing.

Multi-family housing accounts for 65% of all households in the city, and as the proportion of multi-family housing increases annually, related complaints are also rising each year. The complaints involve sensitive issues within multi-family housing complexes, such as management fee charges, election of resident representatives, construction contracts, and execution of construction costs, which cause conflicts and disputes among residents.

To resolve various forms of conflicts and disputes among residents and to improve the customary handling of residual tasks within multi-family housing, as well as to enhance transparency in the operation of management fees, the city established a dedicated Multi-family Housing Management Audit Team in January and has been actively conducting audits since March.

This year, the audit will focus on 20 mandatory management multi-family housing complexes, inspecting areas such as management and operation, accounting, long-term repair, facility maintenance, and safety management plans.

So far, audits have been conducted on four complexes in Uichang-gu and Seongsan-gu. The audit approach emphasizes administrative guidance through on-site consulting rather than punitive measures, encouraging self-improvement. Administrative sanctions will be strengthened only for complexes with numerous or repeated violations.

Through the ‘Consulting Audit’ of multi-family housing management, efficient management methods compliant with relevant laws and regulations are proposed, making the audits practically helpful for the operation and management of multi-family housing, which has received high approval from residents.

Additionally, before the full-scale audit launch earlier this year, the city systematically organized a multi-family housing management status inspection checklist and posted it on the city’s website as basic data for apartment management accessible to everyone. The checklist is subdivided by fields such as budget and accounting, construction and services, long-term repair and safety management, and resident representative meetings and election committees, making it easy for residents to understand. The city plans to continuously supplement and improve the multi-family housing management checklist going forward.

Furthermore, the city will focus on post-audit management through measures such as ▲establishing consistent administrative sanctions based on multi-family housing management audit standards ▲monitoring (feedback) the improvement of administrative sanctions and corrective actions ▲publishing and distributing audit casebooks by analyzing and organizing major audit findings.

An Je-mun, Director of the Urban Policy Bureau, stated, “We will operate the audit system to strengthen the expertise of management entities and resident representative meetings to establish a transparent multi-family housing management culture.” He added, “We will continue to do our best to protect the rights and interests of residents and create a substantial residential environment in multi-family housing.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.