How condo voting quorum works — a plain-English guide

Nearly every condominium decision — from repainting a facade to hiring a new manager — has to pass through a vote. Yet a surprising share of those votes are invalidated after the fact because the meeting missed quorum, or because someone counted heads instead of ownership shares. If you have ever left an owners' meeting unsure whether the vote actually counted, this guide is for you.

What quorum actually means

Quorum is the minimum share of the building that has to be present (in person or by proxy) for a decision to be legally binding. It is expressed as a fraction of the total permillage — the sum of every owner's thousandth share of the building. If your building has a total of 1,000 permillages and the by-laws require a 50% quorum, you need owners representing at least 500 permillages in the room before you can even open the vote.

The confusion usually starts here: two owners of a large penthouse can represent more permillage than ten studio owners combined. Counting heads gives you the wrong quorum every time.

Why weighted voting exists

Once quorum is met, the vote itself is almost always weighted by permillage rather than by headcount. The reason is simple: owners who paid for a larger share of the building also carry a larger share of the costs of every decision. A €100k roof repair is not billed evenly across units — it is split by permillage. So the vote that authorises it is weighted the same way.

This is not the same as one-person-one-vote. In practice you might have 18 people in the room but only three thresholds that matter: majority of permillage present, majority of total permillage, and unanimity. Different decisions require different thresholds.

The three thresholds you actually need to know

• Simple majority of permillage present — routine decisions: maintenance contracts, small repairs, next meeting's date.

• Majority of total permillage (all owners, present or not) — bigger structural work, hiring or firing the manager, adopting the annual budget.

• Unanimity or reinforced majority — changing the by-laws, altering ownership shares, selling common areas.

Local law varies by country, and your building's by-laws can raise (but rarely lower) these thresholds. Always check both.

Where meetings go wrong

Three patterns cause most invalidated votes:

1. Late arrivals count for attendance but not for the vote they missed. If quorum was borderline when the vote opened, adding a proxy afterwards does not retroactively legitimise the tally.

2. Proxies collected outside the required window. Most jurisdictions require proxies to be signed and delivered ahead of the meeting. Verbal proxies almost never count.

3. The wrong majority threshold. A budget passed with 51% of *present* permillage is invalid in jurisdictions that require 51% of *total* permillage.

Making it easier

This is exactly why CoCollab's polls tally by permillage automatically. Every owner is registered with their share; the platform shows quorum live as votes come in, refuses to close the poll if quorum is not met, and produces a signed record of who voted what. Managers stop guessing and residents stop arguing about procedure.

If you're running a building and you're tired of every vote turning into a paperwork rescue mission, give CoCollab a try — it takes about ten minutes to set up your first poll.