Solar panels Management company

Every new apartment development should have, at least, solar hot water.

Retrofitting this to apartment blocks will likely never happen, because of the cost. If there are x apartments, and it costs y to do, then the cost per apartment will be y/x. People who don't want it or can't afford it will get outvoted at meetings and be presented with large bills. Unfortunately with most management companies in Ireland either just surviving or dangerously insolvent there will be more priorities than good energy management I feel.

If your property is part of an OMC then you won't own the land outright, you 'own' it by way of a long lease and the lease will specify whether the roof is part of your demise or the OMC demise.

The lease may have all sorts of other conditions e.g. whether you can make changes to appearance to the external of the property (and that would include solar panels)

So you need to get a copy of the lease, it will be in your deeds so if you have a mortgage then the bank would be able to send you a copy.

Once you have the lease then check;

1. Does the roof belong to you or the OMC -- this will be detailed in the property description and there should be a map.
2. Is there a clause in the lease dealing with the roof or appearance etc

Are you sure it's a mgmt company and not a residents group? One requires annual payment and comes with lots of rules, like no satellite dishes or building walls and the like... the other is a whatsapp group that hopes to share out duties like common area grass cutting.

Thats a bit of a dodgy one then. They probably CAN say that they want houses all the same colour - and bins must be hidden. Pretty daft to care about solar panels on a roof though - in this day and age.

What is the front aspect of your roof (and the rear)? I presume not all houses face the same direction in the estate - so this will HEAVILY restrict those houses that have front facing S,E or W.

If the houses in the estate are all the same look - then it might make sense to approach the MGMT company with a sample quote - for say 8 in front and 8 in rear panel design. Rather than each house deploy a different number of panels - it might look nicer if they were all similar.

I past a new estate recently - and all the houses had exactly the same panel design. it looked BETTER than a neighbour estate that had NONE.