apartment (condominium?) accounting

[Bram Mertens]

Hi,

Now that I own an apartment I need to register some additional transactions
and I couldn't find any information on this yet so I'm hoping for some
pointers and advice.

I'm new both at owning an apartment and Gnucash and unfamiliar with the
English terms so I'll try to explain as best as I can.  I've used wikipedia
to get the translations for some terms.

The Homeowner association has appointment a company to manage the day to
day operations of the building. In Dutch this is called a "syndicus", I
believe the English term would be trustee or syndicate.

To finance the costs of repairs to the public areas, electricity and so on
this trustee has calculated a budget and has divided the expected costs
amongst the homeowners. Every month the homeowners need to pay their
advance so the trustee can pay the bills. At the end of the year the
trustee needs to create a balance sheet and either refund or collect
additional payments from the homeowners to balance the books.

How should I manage such advances and the final bill as private home owner?
Are the advances expenses or still an asset?

Secondly this trustee/syndicate has requested home owners some kind of
deposit in order to have cash available for ongoing expenses above the
money available from the monthly advances. When a homeowner sells his
apartment he/she is refunded this deposit when the new owner has paid
his/her deposit.
I'm fairly certain this should be considered an asset (under money owned to
me?) but I'd like some confirmation on this.

Thirdly a homeowner association can decide to create a separate savings
account to save up for larger repairs to the public area (e.g. new roof).
This is different from the previous two because first of all it needs to be
placed in a separate account and the money paid into this account is tied
to the property. If a homeowners sells his/her apartment this money is sold
with the property. It only ever gets refunded to an owner if the homeowner
association is terminated.
Is this an asset like "money owned to me" or more a fixed asset? Perhaps a
sub account of the fixed asset?

Thanks in advance

Bram Mertens