What the company offers
The company leases apartments near the office, which are made available to officers on a sharing rent-recovery basis. This gives you the following benefits:
- The company pays the security deposit for the apartment, which means you do not have to arrange for this large chunk of money.
- The company negotiates with brokers and brings down security deposit, rent and brokerage fees.
- The company pays rent to the owner of the apartment on time, and collects this rent from officers occupying the apartment by deducting from your salaries. This saves you the hassle of writing a cheque and sending it every month to the owner.
- You get the freedom to choose your apartment. Three officers may get together, for instance, to select an apartment of their choice and ask the company to lease it for them.
- If an apartment is partly occupied, eg. two officers occupying a three-room apartment, then the rent recovered from officers will be in proportion to the parts they are occupying. The balance rent will be paid by the company till such time that an additional officer moves into the vacant room.
- The company expects its officers to be prepared to spend 20% of their gross monthly salary on rent, for shared accommodation of this type. If an officer seeks accommodation on this shared rent-recovery basis, and his gross salary is such that 20% of the salary falls short of his portion of the rent of the apartment, then the company will bear the shortfall. Take the case where the rent for a 2BHK apartment is Rs.9,000 per month and an officer's salary is Rs.12,000 per month. Each occupant's share of the rent would be Rs.3,000. In that case, only Rs.2,400 will be deducted from his salary towards rent, and the balance will be paid by the company as long as the officer stays in that apartment and his salary does not increase.
Rules for company provided apartments
- This facility is extended only to officers who have been given employment, not to trainees. It is available to officers in confirmed positions as well as those on probation, from the date of their joining Merce.
- There will be at most as many officers sharing an apartment as there are rooms in it. A 2BHK apartment will be shared among at most three officers. (Of course, officers are free to share an apartment with less occupancy, eg. two officers sharing a 3BHK apartment, provided they are willing to share the entire rent of the apartment between the two of them, and they notify the company of this decision.)
- Rent sharing will be equal for all occupants of a particular apartment. An officer occupying a bedroom of an apartment will pay as much rent as his colleague occupying the living room of the same apartment.
- Your family members, friends or visiting relatives are allowed to come and stay with you, sharing the common resources of the apartment, provided it is a visit and not a permanent stay.
- Officers are not allowed to share their room with friends or relatives who wish to stay with them on a semi-permanent or permanent basis, ie. who wish to stay with you and study in a college or work in a job in the city.
- Officers will not damage the apartment in any way or make any significant modifications to it. If such damage is detected later, the expenses for repair will be deducted from the officer's salary.
- Brokerage paid to brokers for initial lease as well as lease renewal will be recovered from the officers sharing the apartment. For lease renewal, brokerage will be recovered from the officers sharing that apartment in that month.
- If an officer seeks accommodation as per these terms, he will be offered a choice from among the vacant rooms in the apartments already leased by the company. No fresh apartments will be leased for officers by the company till existing apartments are filled. Similarly, if multiple apartments have rooms vacant, the company may ask officers to shift their lodgings to the vacant rooms so that occupancy may be consolidated and empty apartments released by the company.
- Apartments do not have uniform rent. The rent recovered from the officers residing in Apartment X will be equal to the rent paid by the company for Apartment X. This may have no correlation with rent paid for Apartment Y.
- Rent will always be recovered from officers in units of the full month, except for newly joined recruits or for officers resigning from the company in the middle of a month. Therefore, if an officer intends to shift from one apartment to another, both company-provided, then this shift be done on a calendar-month boundary.
- Any officer moving out of company provided accommodation entirely must give the company two months' written notice about this move.
