Housing company fault history: making recurring faults visible
In this article
A housing company is constantly generating small bills: a drain is unblocked, the front door is adjusted, a pump is repaired, a moisture mark in the basement is dried. Individually, each one is ordinary property upkeep. Only when the faults from different years are brought together do the recurring problems stand out.
What a fault history is
Fault history is not a term defined in law. Here it means the information that accumulates over the years from fault reports, the maintenance company’s work orders, repair invoices, technical reports, findings from rounds and inspections, the maintenance log (huoltokirja) and minutes.
An example: in 2024 the floor drain in the basement floods, in 2025 the same drain is unblocked again and in 2026 there is water in the same room once more. As separate work orders they are three small maintenance tasks. Together they raise the question of why the problem keeps coming back.
A cost that doesn’t show in the accounts
The accounts tell you what money has been spent on, but not whether costs from different years relate to the same thing. Imagine that unblocking the same drain costs €1,200 in 2024, €1,450 in 2025 and €1,600 in 2026, a total of €4,250. The figures are hypothetical. In the accounts they show up as three ordinary expenses; in the fault history, as the same problem three times.
Besides the bill, a recurring fault takes up the maintenance company’s and the property manager’s working time, causes emergency call-out costs and inconvenience for residents, and the risk of damage grows each time.
The law and fault history
The law does not require a separate fault history to be kept, and the board does not need to go through every work order itself. The division of maintenance responsibility between the company and the shareholder is governed by chapter 4 of the Limited Liability Housing Companies Act and the articles of association, and a fault history does not change that.
The importance of upkeep information is, however, reflected in the Building Act: the operating and maintenance manual of a new building includes history and monitoring information as well as the maintenance and repair work carried out. In older buildings, the equivalent information is usually in the maintenance log (huoltokirja).
Recurrence is an observation, not a diagnosis
Three similar fault reports do not automatically mean they have the same cause. If there is moisture in the basement, a puddle forms in the yard when it rains and there are moisture marks on the plinth, these may be three separate things or they may be connected. The fault history does not tell you that the foundation drains are the problem. It tells you that the connection is worth investigating.
The technical cause is investigated as needed by the maintenance company, a designer, a condition surveyor or another expert, and the fault history is valuable background information for them.
Information is often scattered
The maintenance company sees its work orders, the property manager has the invoices and emails, the board has the minutes and residents have their own experiences. The maintenance company may know that the same pump has been repaired four times, while the board sees only the annual maintenance cost. When the maintenance company or property manager changes, part of the history is lost if it has not been transferred to the company. The material to be transferred is described in the article on housing company records management.
Compiling a fault history
A simple spreadsheet is enough. For each event, record
- the date and location
- the fault observed and the action taken
- the cost
- whether the same fault has occurred before
- whether monitoring or a closer investigation is needed
The spreadsheet should show how many times the fault has recurred, where it occurs, what was done before, how much the repairs have cost in total, and whether the problem went away or came back. When the same item keeps appearing on the bills, ask whether this is still normal maintenance or whether you should find out why the fault keeps returning. An electronic fault reporting channel makes it easier for information to accumulate.
Before a building or apartment round, it is worth checking where faults have recurred. During the round, the same spots are visually inspected and any deviations documented. When the findings for each apartment are recorded in the same way on every round, you can compare one year with another.
Signs that the fault history is worth looking into
- The same fault report comes in every year.
- The same appliance is repaired several times.
- The same apartment reports the same problem again and again.
- Repair costs for the same building element are rising.
- The problem returns soon after the repair.
- Nobody can say what has previously been done to the item.
Learning, not blaming
The purpose of a fault history is not to find the person who did something wrong five years ago, but to understand the building. Savings should not be promised too readily: an old appliance may need regular maintenance, and a system may fail in different years for different reasons. But if the underlying cause of a recurring fault is found and fixed, the same costs no longer come back every year.
This article provides general information and does not replace case-specific legal or technical advice.
