Fax, Managing Agents and Co-ownership: Serving Notice Without Getting It Wrong

Short answer: in a co-ownership, you are almost never free to choose your sending channel. The decree of 17 March 1967 imposes a specific form for each act: the notice convening the general meeting and the notification of the minutes must be sent by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, by electronic registered letter (LRE) if the co-owner has expressly consented to it, or by hand delivery against signature. Fax has no value as a notification: it does not start the two-month challenge period and clears nothing. On the other hand, it remains an excellent channel for anything that falls under urgent operational exchanges — reporting water damage to the managing agent, sending a quote to the insurer, alerting an on-call manager on a Saturday evening, forwarding a document to a department that publishes nothing but a fax number. The rule of thumb: fax informs and time-stamps, registered post or LRE notifies. A well-organised co-ownership council uses both, and knows which one it is using each time.

Why form matters more here than anywhere else

Co-ownership law is a law of deadlines. Two months to challenge a general meeting decision from the notification of the minutes, at least twenty-one days between sending the notice and holding the meeting, thirty days for the formal demand preceding acceleration of payment on unpaid service charges. These deadlines only run if the act has been notified in the prescribed form.

That is the subtlety many co-ownership councils discover too late: a perfectly drafted letter, sent through a channel that is not provided for, does not produce the expected legal effect. It informs the recipient, which is already useful, but it triggers no countdown. Conversely, an irregular notification can deprive the managing agent of the benefit of time-barring: if the minutes were never properly notified, the challenge period simply never begins to run, and the decision remains open to challenge well beyond two months.

The reasoning is the same as the one we set out in our comparison of acknowledgements of receipt: fax, LRE or email — except that in co-ownership matters, the legislator has already decided for you in respect of a large share of these acts.

Mapping your communications: what is mandatory, what is free

Here is the breakdown that structures everything else. It applies to residential co-ownerships governed by the Act of 10 July 1965 and its implementing decree.

The picture is clear: everything touching the institutional life of the co-ownership falls under registered post, everything touching its practical, day-to-day life is free. And it is precisely in that second column that online fax retains real usefulness, because it produces a time-stamped transmission report without the recipient having to sign up for anything.

Electronic registered mail, often misunderstood

Since the reform introduced by the ELAN Act and the ordinance of 30 October 2019, co-ownership acts may be notified electronically. But two conditions, regularly overlooked, lock the mechanism in place.

First, the co-owner must have given express consent to electronic notification, consent obtained at a general meeting or by letter, and revocable at any time. A previous exchange of emails is not enough. Second, the service used must meet the requirements of a qualified electronic registered letter within the meaning of the European eIDAS regulation — that is, a qualified trust service provider, listed by ANSSI on the national trusted list. A message sent via a non-qualified platform is not an LRE: it is an email with a read receipt, whose evidential value is infinitely weaker.

In practice: if your managing agent announces that they are "going paperless with meeting notices", ask for the provider's name and check that it does appear on the trusted list. That is the question that settles the debate in thirty seconds.

For a co-ownership council that wants to get properly up to speed on these mechanisms, a practical co-ownership handbook updated for the latest reform remains the best investment: professional publishers issue an updated edition every year, which saves you from navigating blind between repealed texts and outdated commentary.

Where online fax really saves time

Ruling fax out of the notification sphere does not mean doing without it. Three situations come up constantly in building management.

A technical emergency at the weekend

Water damage breaks out on a Saturday evening. The managing agent's office is closed, the voicemail redirects to an on-call service, the insurer has a claims number but its online form requires a client account whose password nobody on the council has. Online fax lets you send, straight from a phone, the photo of the damage, the completed claim form and the joint statement to the claims department's fax number, with a time-stamped transmission report proving you did not wait until Monday. That proof of timing carries real weight if the insurer later disputes how the damage worsened.

To photograph a paper document properly in these conditions, a mobile scanning app combined with decent lighting makes the difference between a legible fax and grey mush. We set out the method in our article on digitising paper documents.

Dealing with contractors and public authorities

Lift engineers, heating specialists, municipal hygiene departments, regional health agencies for reporting lead poisoning or pest infestations: many of these contacts still publish a fax number in their official details, precisely because it is a channel requiring neither an account nor interoperability. Our article on reporting to the authorities by fax lists the reflexes to adopt.

Sending bulky documents to a professional firm

A lawyer handling a co-ownership dispute, a chartered surveyor, a notary during a property transfer: these professionals receive documents through a variety of channels, and for many of them fax retains the status of a reliable secondary channel. The appeal is not modernity, it is the absence of friction — no attachment blocked by an antivirus, no expired sharing link.

Building a notification process that stands up in court

A co-ownership council or a volunteer managing agent does not need heavy infrastructure. They need three things: a record, a filing system, a written rule.

The record. Every item sent, whatever the channel, must produce a supporting document that is kept. For registered post, that is the proof of posting and the acknowledgement of receipt. For LRE, it is the proof of sending and the electronic acknowledgement issued by the qualified provider. For online fax, it is the transmission report stating the number called, the time stamp, the number of pages and the status. That report is worth nothing without the document sent: you must archive the two together, in the same folder, with the same file name plus a suffix.

The filing system. Archiving must survive a change of co-ownership council, and that is where most co-ownerships fall down. One folder per accounting year, one sub-folder per type of act, and a copy on a medium independent of the chairperson's personal computer. A small-capacity encrypted external hard drive is more than enough for ten years of co-ownership archives, and has the advantage of being physically handed over during a handover. Our guide on archiving faxes and evidential value over ten years describes the format and metadata to keep.

The written rule. A one-page note, voted on or at least minuted at a council meeting, stating which channel is used for which act and who keeps what. It is trivial, and it is what saves co-ownerships in litigation, because it demonstrates a consistent practice rather than ad hoc improvisation.

The five costly mistakes

1. Notifying the minutes by plain email. The challenge period does not run. The decision remains open to challenge, sometimes for years.
2. Assuming consent to electronic registered mail applies to everyone. It is individual and revocable. A single non-consenting co-owner, notified by LRE, is enough to undermine the entire meeting.
3. Confusing sending with receipt. The twenty-one-day notice period runs from the day after the letter's first delivery attempt, not from the date of posting. A mailing timed to the day backfires on its sender.
4. Faxing a document containing sensitive data without precautions. Unpaid service charges, a debt recovery procedure, a report of neighbourhood nuisance: these are personal data. The destination number must be checked character by character, and the article on faxes sent to the wrong number explains what to do in the event of an error. The CNIL has repeatedly stressed that sending to the wrong recipient constitutes a data breach within the meaning of the GDPR.
5. Keeping no archive on the co-owner's side. The managing agent keeps their own records; the co-owner who challenges must produce their own. A compact desktop scanner placed next to the incoming mail turns this chore into a three-second reflex.

The special case of the volunteer managing agent

Roughly one co-ownership in ten in France is managed without a professional agent, often in small buildings. The volunteer managing agent bears exactly the same formal obligations as a professional agent, without the infrastructure. This is the profile for which the combination of qualified LRE for notifications + online fax for operational matters pays off best: no heavy subscription, no machine to maintain, pay-as-you-go billing.

Two practical precautions are nonetheless essential. First: have a reliable scanning method, because everything goes through files. Second: never mix personal email with the co-ownership's email. A dedicated address, hosted with a serious provider, together with a password manager so that access outlives the current term, avoids the classic situation where the outgoing chairperson leaves with the credentials in their head.

Frequently asked questions

Can a fax serve as notice convening the general meeting?

No. Article 64 of the decree of 17 March 1967 sets out an exhaustive list of accepted forms: registered letter with request for acknowledgement of receipt, electronic registered letter with the co-owner's express consent, delivery against signature or receipt. Fax is not on the list. A faxed notice does not validly start the twenty-one-day period and exposes the meeting to annulment.

Does a fax transmission report carry weight in court?

It carries the weight of prima facie evidence, freely assessed by the judge, but it does not amount to notification where the law requires one. In co-ownership matters, it will mainly serve to demonstrate diligence — that you alerted the managing agent on such a day at such a time — rather than to start a deadline running. Our article on the evidential value of fax sets out this distinction in detail.

Can I refuse electronic notification decided at a general meeting?

Yes. Consent to electronic notification is individual: a general meeting cannot impose it on a co-owner who has not given it, and it is revocable at any time by a simple request to the managing agent. The agent must then revert to paper registered post for that co-owner.

How long should co-ownership documents be kept?

Personal claims between co-owners and the co-ownership association are time-barred after five years under the ELAN Act, but meeting minutes, works-related documents and the building's maintenance log should be kept far longer — ten years minimum for anything touching the ten-year construction warranty, and with no practical limit for the record of decisions. Err on the generous side.

Can the managing agent charge for sending meeting notices?

The standard management contract, annexed to the decree of 26 March 2015, strictly frames which costs may be charged. Sending meeting notices falls under routine management; registered postage costs may be recharged to the co-ownership association in accordance with the terms of the contract. The switch to LRE, which is cheaper, is moreover often presented as a source of collective savings.

In summary

• In a co-ownership, the form of the mailing determines the legal effect: meeting notices, minutes and formal demands require registered post with acknowledgement, qualified LRE or delivery against signature.
• Fax has no value as a notification for these acts, and a fax sent instead of registered post starts no deadline running.
• Online fax remains relevant for operational matters: claims, contractors, on-call services, public authorities, sending documents to a professional firm.
• An LRE is only valid if the co-owner has given express consent and the provider is eIDAS-qualified, which can be checked on the trusted list published by ANSSI.
• Always archive the document and its proof of sending together, on a medium independent of the council chairperson's personal computer.
• Set out a one-page written rule assigning a channel to each type of act: that is what demonstrates consistent practice in the event of litigation.