THE owners’ committees of several residential properties in Shenzhen have been giving perks such as cash bonuses to owners, with the Spring Festival around the corner.

    The owners’ committee of Nanyue Mingzhu residential estate in Nanshan District will give out cash awards ranging from 2,600 yuan (US$417) to 8,000 yuan to its 452 homeowners for the fourth consecutive year, according to a report in yesterday’s Daily Sunshine.

    The money comes from revenue generated by renting the public space in an annex building of the housing estate to a big electronics retailer.

    The public space used to be occupied by the estate’s developer and leased to the retailer. The developer took the rental money, but never contributed to a compulsory property maintenance fund.

    The owners’ committee recovered ownership of the public space and signed a new rental contract with the retailer after eight months of negotiation. The monthly rent jumped from 40 yuan to 65 yuan per square meter.

    This year’s perk will be 40 yuan per square meter for each homeowner in the estate.

    Besides cash, homeowners of some residential properties received cooking oil and rice as gifts from the owners’ committees of their housing estates thanks to an increasingly important role their owners’ committees are playing in property governance.

    More than 70 percent of the 442 households in Jingzhou Building in Futian District took part in a vote to evaluate the performance of its owners’ committee over the weekend. Each household who cast a vote received a four-liter bottle of corn oil and 10 kilograms of rice, the paper said.

    The director of the owners’ committee, Zhou Jiajian, said the perks were intended to encourage owners to be involved in property governance.

    Instead of giving material perks, the owners’ committee of Tianranju residential estate, also in Futian District, which manages the property’s public account in cooperation with the property management company, pushed the company to speed up using its remaining 830,000-yuan balance to renovate parking and monitoring facilities on the property. (Martin Li)