Serbian Housing Community Assembly: Notice, Quorum and Voting

The manager convenes the assembly of a Serbian housing community (stambena zajednica), and the law treats an owner as properly summoned once a notice is posted in a visible place in a common part of the building at least three days before the session. The quorum is a simple majority of all votes. If a session fails, the repeat session is held 3 to 30 days later with the same agenda and a quorum of one third. Decisions pass on a simple majority of those present, except three kinds of decisions that need two thirds of all votes.

All of this comes from the Law on Housing and Building Maintenance (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia No. 104/2016 and 9/2020, the latter through another law). Its provisions on management, sessions and decision-making have not been amended since 2016.

Who convenes, and how often

The two mandatory organs of a housing community are the assembly and the manager. The assembly meets at least twice a year; the manager calls it, chairs it and must attend every session.

Any owner of a unit may submit an initiative to call a session. If the manager does not call it within ten days of the owner's request, the owner may call it himself and must notify the manager.

A newly formed housing community must hold its first assembly, where the manager is elected, within 60 days of becoming a legal person.

The notice: posted, at least three days ahead

The law names one way of summoning owners: a notice posted in a visible place in a common part of the building that owners use every day (entrance, hallway and the like). It states the day, hour and place of the session and the proposed agenda. The deadline is at least three days before the session, or the day of the session itself in urgent cases.

A message to residents in an app, by email or in the building's chat can help more people show up, but it is an addition. The statutory notice is the posted one.

Why a proper notice matters: an owner who fails three times in a row to respond to a session for which he was properly summoned, without telling the manager why, is treated as unavailable, and his vote drops out of both the quorum and the total. It is worth recording when and where each notice was posted.

Notice template

NOTICE OF A SESSION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF THE HOUSING COMMUNITY
Stambena zajednica [building address]

Dear owners,

the session of the assembly of the housing community [building address]
will be held on [date] at [time], at [place].

PROPOSED AGENDA
1. Election of a minute-taker.
2. Adoption of the minutes of the previous session of [date].
3. Manager's report on work and finances for [year].
4. [Subject of the decision, e.g. current maintenance works: description
   and amount].
5. [Subject of the decision].
6. Any other business.

REPEAT SESSION (fill in only if this is a repeat call)
The session scheduled for [date] was not held for lack of a quorum.
The repeat session is held with the same agenda. The quorum for the repeat
session: [one third, or a higher quorum if the community has set one].

An owner who cannot attend may vote through a representative or proxy.
The power of attorney is issued in writing and kept with the minutes.
[If enabled: an owner may also vote in writing or by electronic means as
follows: ...]

Notice posted on [date] at [place], at least three days before the
session.

Manager: [name, contact]                     Signature: ____________

What in this template is law and what is practice. The law requires the day, hour and place, the proposed agenda, posting in a common part of the building, and the deadline. A numbered agenda, the repeat-session block and the proxy line are practice, which makes it easier to check each decision against the numbered points of the minutes later.

Quorum, the repeat session and unavailable owners

Quorum for the session is a simple majority of the total votes of the members entitled to vote on the question, unless the housing community has decided on a higher number of votes.

If the session could not be held for lack of a quorum, it is called again no sooner than three and no later than 30 days after the day it should have been held, with the same proposed agenda. The quorum for the repeat session is one third of the total number of votes, unless the community has set a higher number.

Who has how many votes

• An owner of a unit has one vote. A person who owns several units has as many votes as units.
• The owner of a garage, garage space or garage box has no separate vote, unless it is his only unit; then he votes only on decisions concerning the part of the building where the garage is.
• Where a unit is co-owned, the co-owners split that unit's votes in proportion to their shares.
• A capable member of the household or the tenant of the unit may take part and vote in the owner's place, except on the decisions listed in art. 42(1), items 1, 2, 4, 12 and 18 of the Law, and unless the owner has told the assembly or the manager that he does not allow it.
• An owner may also vote through a representative or proxy. The power of attorney is in writing and is kept with the minutes.

Majorities: who decides with how many votes

• A simple majority of the votes of those present who are entitled to vote on the question. That is the rule.
• Two thirds of the total number of votes for exactly three decisions: disposing of common parts of the building, entrusting management to a professional manager, and the housing community taking on credit.

Note the different denominators: the ordinary majority is counted among those present, the qualified one among all votes. "Two thirds of those present" is wrong.

These majorities are the statutory default. The owners may, by a unanimous decision of all owners of units, adopt their own rules and regulate competences and the required majority differently from the law. Those rules are registered and published in the Register of Housing Communities, and anyone interested may inspect them, so check whether the building has such rules before counting votes.

Electronic and written voting

Article 44(4) of the Law expressly allows an owner to vote in writing or by electronic means. An owner who does so counts as present when the quorum is calculated. In addition, the assembly may take decisions by written statements outside a session.

What the law does not prescribe: any form, identification method, electronic signature, platform or state system for an electronic vote, or a minimum period for collecting votes. It does not say that an electronic vote replaces the posted notice of the session. And the minutes must still record how each member present voted, so an electronic vote in Serbia is by law a vote attributable to a named owner, not a secret ballot.

So the accurate wording is: Serbian law expressly permits electronic voting, but no particular method is "compliant" in advance.

The minutes

Every decision of the assembly is entered in minutes kept by the manager or a minute-taker he appoints, and the manager is responsible for drawing them up properly. The minutes contain the place and day of the session, the name of the minute-taker, a summary of the discussion on each agenda item, the result of the vote on each item and how each member present voted. The list of persons who took part is an integral part of the minutes, and the manager, the minute-taker and everyone who took part sign them.

One softening provision: a failure to follow these rules does not affect the validity of the decisions if the result of the vote and the content of the decisions can be established in another way.

How Unitify works here

Unitify helps around the session but does not replace the statutory steps: the posted notice, the minutes and the signatures on the minutes.

• Notice. The resident app can deliver a copy of the notice and the agenda to residents, as an addition to the posted notice.
• Voting. The manager creates a vote for a building, chooses the audience and the voting period, residents vote from the app, and the manager follows participation (how many units have voted out of the units in the audience). Before publishing, check the vote rules in this article, for example that a garage has no separate vote.
• What Unitify does not do. It has no video calling of its own and does not offer a qualified electronic signature. Serbian law does not require an electronic signature for an electronic vote, but a vote in an app does not by itself make a session legally valid. The law and the building's own rules decide that.

See the Serbia page, pricing and owner voting, or book a demo to see how it would work for your buildings.