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Our 1974 elevator broke on a Saturday with two people inside. Five months and €61,200 later, here's what a Soviet panelka elevator replacement actually costs in Latvia and Estonia — real quotes, funding options, and the vote that almost didn't pass.
I paid €187 for heat one January while my neighbor paid €94 — same building, same apartment size. Here's how shared heating billing actually works in Baltic panelkas, why it's so unfair, and what your association can do about it.
Most apartment associations in Riga and Tallinn set aside a fraction of what their buildings actually need for major repairs. I ran the numbers on a real panel building — here's what the reserve fund gap looks like, why boards keep underfunding it, and what to do if you're on the board.
Nobody on our board could say where the monthly fee actually went. So I pulled a year of bank statements and built the breakdown. Heating and the elevator ate half the budget. Here's the full split.
Last March, a yellow envelope showed up in our mailbox in Āgenskalns. 'Mājas tehniskais stāvoklis' — a technical condition report. The board had ordered a full building audit, and...
Courtyard parking fights are the most emotionally charged issue in an apartment association. A practical guide to who legally owns what in Latvia and Estonia, how to allocate spots fairly, and how to survive winter parking bans.
Elected to your apartment association board in Latvia? A practical, firsthand guide to the law, meetings, budgeting, property managers, and the mistakes that cost buildings money.
A practical framework for annual budget planning in apartment associations and HOAs: start with actuals, separate recurring from capital costs, build the reserve on purpose, and involve owners before the meeting.
Every property manager I know has a horror story about a maintenance request that fell through the cracks. Here is a real workflow that stops requests from getting lost, tenants from getting frustrated, and contractors from getting away with slow work.
Keeping good tenants is cheaper than finding new ones. Here are seven practical, field-tested strategies property managers can use to reduce turnover.
A practical, jargon-free guide to GDPR obligations for property managers — what data you handle, how to keep it safe, and what residents can ask for.
A 12-point checklist for evaluating property management platforms against your real workflows — not the marketing deck. Includes red flags, a test-drive protocol, and pricing guidance.
Manual meter reading and utility billing eats days every month. Here's how to automate the collection, calculation, and invoicing — and what to do about residents who never submit readings.
Urbaneta now has a public API. It's live, documented, and ready for integrations. If you're a developer, a property management company with in-house tech, or just someone who wants to stop copying data between systems, this is for you.
