Owners of units in Jointly Owned Buildings, such as apartments and other complexes with shared facilities are required by law to contribute towards the cost of insuring, maintaining, repairing, restoring and managing the Jointly Owned Property by paying Communal Fees.
(Jointly Owned Property are those parts of the Jointly Owned Building that are not registered as units. These include swimming pools, stairwells, lifts and other facilities available to everyone in the Jointly Owned Building.)
How should Communal Fees be calculated?
The correct method of charging communal fees is based on the relative size of each unit in square metres, comprising the enclosed area of the unit plus the covered and uncovered area of balconies, verandas.
The calculation – (unit’s area ÷ total units’ areas) = percentage contribution to the communal budget set by the Management Committee.
What did ChatGPT say?
One ‘enterprising’ Management Committee asked ChatGPT how Communal Fees should be calculated. ChatGPT responded along the lines:
in cases where regulations for the jointly owned building have not been agreed and registered, the percentage share of the jointly owned property shown on the title deed should be used to calculate communal fees.
This is absolute rubbish! I investigated further.
Where did ChatGPT get the rubbish?
The rubbish information came from the website of a registered Real Estate Agent, from which ChatGPT concluded:
This “share” appears in the title-deed or documentation for the unit; so an owner can see their proportion of the communal property and hence their contribution.
I can’t blame ChatGPT, much depends on how it’s been trained and the information it finds on the Internet – and it doesn’t know if the information it finds is factual, ‘fake news’ or just plain rubbish.
AI hallucinations
All AI (Artificial Intelligence) suffers from ‘hallucinations’, which occur when an AI model outputs factually incorrect, nonsensical, or surreal information.
A study by Stanford University found that AI hallucinations, or the generation of false information (lies), can occur in 69% to 88% of the time in response to specific legal queries for state-of-the-art language models (which includes ChatGPT.)
Training ChatGPT
To prevent other Management Committees and others falling into a similar trap, I trained ChatGPT by uploading the The Immovable Property (Tenure, Registration & Valuation) Law, Cap. 224 (in Greek) and asking it:
Based solely on the information contained in the attached document, how are communal fees calculated for owners of units in jointly owned buildings? Please answer in British English.
This time, it spat out the correct answer:
Communal fees in jointly owned buildings are apportioned among all unit owners according to the floor area of each unit, as prescribed by the Regulations. These fees cover the costs of maintaining, managing, repairing and insuring the communal property. The Management Committee determines the precise amounts and collection arrangements, and may recover unpaid contributions through court action.
Quizzing ChatGPT
Pleased that ChatGPT has provided me with the correct answer, I asked it:
Are you aware that the “share” that appears in the title-deed or documentation for the unit is not used to calculate a unit owner’s communal fees?
ChatGPT replied:
You are absolutely correct — and that’s an important and often-misunderstood distinction in Cypriot property law.
And it went on to say:
Many developers and management committees in Cyprus mistakenly use the title-deed share as a convenient proxy for communal fees — often because both are expressed as percentages.
However, this practice has no legal basis unless the building’s registered Regulations explicitly adopt that approach.
The legally correct method, unless otherwise stated in the Regulations, is to base communal fees on unit area (m²), as the law prescribes.
The moral of this article
Don’t assume that ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) tell you the truth. Research shows that they all ‘hallucinate’ (lie.)
If you’re looking for the facts rather than speculative information, use reliable sources such as the laws of the country or reliable media outlets rather than hallucinating AI applications.
