Real estate is insanely good business and almost always funny. But.. there are some things about it I could live without. I’m working with one of them right now.
It’s some new rules from our municipality that states we have to redo all private drains to meet their new regulations. And that’s all very good as I care about ourenvironment. I just can’t stand how it’s all being handled.
It begins with a letter saying that the people at themunicipal knows you have a private drain and wants to come and inspect it. They arrive, let’s you know it doesn’tmeet their requirements and charge you around 1000 sekfor the time they spent at your place
The next step is that they want to come out again and have a look at the soil on your property. That means you have to pay for an excavator to come digg a hole where they can look. Bring them out. Pay them another 1000sek for the time spent on your property then get the excavator back to fill the whole back up.
And then.. you have to fill out an application where you tell them that yes, I want to redo my drain to meet your new requirements (that tends to change every few years). You send the application to the same people at themunicipal who then tells you this and that is not right. If you were to ask them how it should be you won’t get any answers as they won’t take any responsibility. Anyways. The cost of getting your application handled and permission to start the actual work with your drain. 5 500sek.
You then do the job. Usually costs between 40 and 80 000 sek which you of course have to pay yourself. Once done, a final inspection and another 1000 sek..
Another similar thing happened with my multifamily places. I got a letter saying there was high risks of radioactive stuff coming from the ground where my houses were located and I had to do some tests toensure nothing was wrong. I did the tests. Costed meapprox. 2000 sek/ house. Gave the results to themunicipality (no radioactive activity at all) and thought that was it. But no. Apparently this process included so much work for them I had to pay more than 2000 sek per house for the time they put in.. Just sent them a letter where I told them to specify the hours they charge.
All in all, I don’t really care about it businesswise. Since everybody has to do it and it increases more in value than it costs if you try to do it as ecenomically as possible (what business is about).
What upsets me is how the municipality should be working for the habitants of the place. They don’t. They only work for themselves. Always looking for new ways to steal some of all money needed to pay their salaries. The only difference between a bad municipal and the mafia is their ways of collecting money. A Hitman vs.kronofogden.
A. One more thing while I’m at it. I really think they should bring back officials liability. As it is today, a white collar can say and do pretty much whatever he or she wants and still not be held responsible for his or her actions. That sucks!