The Power of Sale: How Strata Corporations Can Legally Recover Unpaid Fees

Delinquency rates exceeding 30% are not uncommon in Jamaican strata corporations. Boards spend meeting after meeting discussing who owes what. Property managers make phone calls that go unanswered. Letters are sent and ignored. Months turn into years. The corporation’s finances deteriorate. Maintenance is deferred. The residents who pay on time subsidize those who do not.

Most boards facing this situation believe their only options are social pressure, threatening letters, or expensive legal proceedings in the courts. Few know about the most powerful enforcement tool available to them under the Registration (Strata Titles) Act: the Power of Sale.

What Is the Power of Sale?

A Certificate of Power of Sale, issued by the Commission of Strata Corporations, grants the strata corporation the legal right to sell a proprietor’s unit to recover outstanding maintenance contributions, insurance assessments, and related fees.

This is not a theoretical mechanism. It is a formal legal process with specific requirements, prescribed forms, and defined steps. When executed properly, it allows the corporation to recover arrears that would otherwise be uncollectable — and it sends a clear signal to every proprietor that non-payment has real consequences.

Eligibility

The threshold for Power of Sale eligibility is lower than most board members expect:

• Arrears must be outstanding for more than 30 days
• The amount owed is irrelevant — any amount overdue by 30 or more days qualifies
• The corporation must hold annual compliance certificates for each year covered in the arrears period

That last requirement is critical. If a proprietor owes arrears spanning 2023 through 2025, the corporation needs compliance certificates for all three years. A corporation that has not maintained its own compliance cannot pursue Power of Sale. This is one of the most important reasons to keep annual returns current.

The Application

Power of Sale applications are made using Form 9, with a non-refundable fee of JMD $5,000 per strata unit. Additional costs include obtaining certified title copies and preparing required documentation.

Required Documentation

This is where most corporations encounter difficulty. The documentation requirements are specific and comprehensive:

1. Completed Application Form 9 — one per unit
2. Notice letter to the proprietor — using the official CSC template, bearing the corporation’s seal and the signature of a named officer
3. Declaration form — completed by the person who physically affixes the notice to the unit door
4. Photograph of the affixed notice — documentary evidence that the notice was placed on the unit’s front door
5. Certified copy of the registered title — obtained from the National Land Agency (Office of the Registrar of Titles, 93 Hanover Street, Kingston). The title provides proprietor names and addresses, as well as mortgagee details.
6. Annual compliance certificates — one for each year covered by the arrears period
7. Statement of accounts — this must show a zero opening balance and clearly itemise all charges. This is not a summary or a running balance. Every charge must be individually listed from the beginning.

If the corporation charges interest on arrears, the application must also include resolution minutes approving the specific interest rate. Interest cannot be charged without a formal resolution from the membership.

The Process Step by Step

Step 1 — Gather Compliance Certificates

Before anything else, confirm that the corporation holds compliance certificates for every year covered by the arrears statement. If the proprietor owes from 2022 through 2025, you need certificates for 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. Without these, the application will not proceed.

Step 2 — Obtain the Registered Title

Request a certified copy of the registered title from the Office of the Registrar of Titles at 93 Hanover Street, Kingston. From this document, extract the proprietor’s full legal names and addresses, as well as any mortgagee details. The mortgagee is relevant because they have a financial interest in the property.

Step 3 — Prepare the Notice

Using the official CSC notice letter template, prepare the formal notice to the proprietor. The document must bear the corporation’s official seal and the signature of a named officer. The accompanying statement of accounts must start from a zero opening balance and clearly itemise every charge — every maintenance fee, every special assessment, every applicable interest charge.

This is one of the most common failure points. A statement that shows a lump-sum “balance brought forward” is not acceptable. The CSC requires a complete, transparent account history.

Step 4 — Serve the Notice

The notice must be delivered through two methods — both are required:

1. Registered mail — with the Post Office date stamp as confirmation of posting
2. Physical affixation — the notice must be affixed to the front door of the proprietor’s unit, with a photograph documenting the placement and a declaration form completed by the person who performed the affixation

This dual-service requirement ensures the proprietor cannot claim they were never notified.

Step 5 — File the Application

Submit all required documents to the Commission of Strata Corporations along with the JMD $5,000 per-unit fee. The application is not considered complete until all documentation is in order.

As the CSC notes: “The application is incomplete and a hearing will not be scheduled until proof of service on the Respondent is filed.”

Why Most Corporations Never Pursue It

The Power of Sale is a powerful tool. But the documentation burden is significant, particularly for corporations that do not maintain organised records.

Consider what is required: a zero-opening-balance statement of accounts covering potentially years of charges, compliance certificates for each year, a certified title copy from the NLA, properly executed notice with photographic evidence, and dual-method service. For a volunteer board member with a filing cabinet and a spreadsheet, assembling this package is a project that can take weeks or months.

The result is that the most effective enforcement mechanism available to strata corporations goes largely unused. Proprietors who owe years of arrears continue to enjoy the same amenities as those who pay faithfully, because the corporation cannot assemble the paperwork to act.

The Shared Community Act 2026

The Registration (Shared Community) Act 2026, tabled in Parliament on January 28, 2026, extends similar enforcement powers to gated communities. Under the new Act, if proprietors in a shared community do not pay their contributions, a lien forms against their property. The lien must be cleared before the unit can be sold. Community corporations will be able to pursue Power of Sale through a process similar to the strata mechanism.

This means the enforcement tools currently available only to strata corporations will soon be available to thousands of gated communities across Jamaica. The documentation requirements will be similar — and the need for organised record-keeping will be equally critical.

Where Technology Closes the Gap

The Power of Sale process does not fail because of legal complexity. It fails because of administrative complexity. The documentation requirements are specific, the record-keeping demands are high, and manual systems cannot maintain the consistency required.

A platform that maintains proper financial records from day one — with itemised charge histories, zero-balance opening statements, and automatic arrears tracking — eliminates the most common failure point. When every charge is recorded as it occurs, generating the required statement of accounts is not a weeks-long project. It is a report.

FiWi Community is built for exactly this. Maintenance fee invoicing with full charge histories. Automatic flagging when accounts exceed 30 days overdue. Compliance certificate tracking. Document storage for all governance records. Arrears dashboards that show at a glance which units qualify for Power of Sale — and what documentation is already in place.

The Power of Sale is not a tool of last resort. It is the enforcement mechanism that the law provides. But it only works when the corporation’s records are in order. Building that foundation starts with the right systems.