On December 21, 2021, the DIN Consumer Council published the study prepared by ConPolicy on the development of a new standard for annual and operating statements for condominiums. The background to the study is that condominium owners often have problems with poorly structured and difficult to understand annual accounts. Until now, the annual and operating accounts, which are published annually by the administration of the condominiums, have not been subject to any special requirements. As a result, complex figures are often produced that are hardly comprehensible to the condominium owners. The DIN Consumer Council commissioned the study, which has now been published, with the aim of drafting a consumer-friendly standard proposal for the preparation of annual and operating accounts.
First, an inventory of the current practice of annual statements was carried out and relevant problems were identified on the basis of literature analyses, expert discussions and the analysis of annual statements. This was followed by the development of a model for reasonable annual statements. In addition, existing templates and decision-making aids for annual accounts were identified, analyzed and evaluated. From this, a draft for a standard proposal was derived, which will be fed into the standardization work.
The long version of the study can be found here.