Unpaid Community Fees

We  have  6  apartments  in  our  community  that  have  not  paid  community  fees  since  the  formation  of  the  community  June '09.

3  apartments  the  owners  have  done  a  runner  and  are  being  re-possessed.

I  owner  took  on  an  apartment  July '10  but  has  not  paid  any  fees ( no  fees  have  been  paid  by  the  builder  prior  to  the  sale )  and  the  Solicitor  conducting  the  completion  did  not  ask  the  President  if  there  were  any  debts  on  the  property,  the  solicitor  is  also  the  Presidents  solicitor.

2  apartments  remain  unsold  but  the  promoter  and  builder  are  going  to  purchase  one  each  and  are  due  to  complete  next  week.,  the  solicitor  has  indicated  they  will  pay  community  fees  but  has  not  indicated  if  the  owed  fees  will  be  paid.

My  question  is  how  far  back  can  you  go  in  relation  to  collecting  unpaid  community  fees.

Sanoliver

 Hi,

You should look to your Administrator to sort this out if you have one, Don't expect improvment to happen over night as the Spanish Legal system is so slow it seems to stop still. 

Thanks  doedoe,  we  do  not  have  an  administrator  we  are  running  ourselves  for  now,  the  problem  is  can  we  claim  back  community  fees  I  year  2  years  3 years  or  is  there  a  limit  to  how  far  back  you  can  claim  or  like  the  Tax  man  can  we  only  go  back  to  a  certain  point.

I  realise  the  community  is  still  young  and  the  owed  fees  only  go  back  as  far  as  June  '09  but  are  we  still  able  to  claim  unpaid  fees  off  whoever  takes  over  the  properties  ie  the  banks  for  the  re-possessions  or  the  builder  who  is  buying  a  left  over.

I  think  there  is  improvement  in the  system  because  there  are  a  lot  of  individuals  putting  themselves  out  to  make  owners  and  future  owners  more  informed.

Hi,

The Spanish Horizontal Law woud be a good guide if you get hold of a copy, or ask Maria who is the lawyer that answers many questions on the different blogs, pull up Community fee problems. 

Good luck

If you have irish or uk debtors use communityfees.com in Uk through our courts. Spanish courts are slow, but I think you can now go back to year 1, these debts need to be notified, because you dont have an administrator you ought to use a good solicitor if you can find one.

noddy

Horizontal Law Section 9e: Any person acquiring a unit in horizontal property ownership, even where the title was entered in the
Land Registry, shall be liable for, and the unit acquired attached to payment of any outstanding
amounts payable to the community for general expenses by the previous owners up to the limit of
the fees assessed for the period to date of the year when the transfer of ownership took place and for
the natural year immediately precedent.

http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/horizontal-laws.pdf SAVE THIS LINK TO YOUR BOOKMARKS / FAVOURITES!!!!!!

Thank  you  for  your  reply,  Roberto , noddy  and  doedoe,  I believe  at  the  present  we  are  just  able  to  make  a  claim  for  all  fees  backdated,  we  may  not  get  them  all  but  we  will  certainly  not  give  up  trying.

Sometimes you have to consider it is better for unsold units to sell and for community fees to be paid going forward.

The problem with many unsold units is the high developer mortgage and the unpaid community fees and other debts attached to these properties.

At the end of the day you need a viable community where all properties are owned and owners are paying community fees and then maybe with good management community fees overall can be reduced.

So deals need to made to clean up the past and move on but there is very little commonsense out there and little if any communication between developer, bank and community on how to resolve current situation.

So it looks as if the position is that the new owners are liable for this year's and last year's fees.  If previous non-paying owners were sued in England and Wales, the period of limitation would basically be 6 years.

 Hi,  Before completing on a property in Spain you must make sure your lawyer has checked if there is any debt on the property. you will then know if you have any debt of the seller to pay.

Sadly my lawyer failed to inform us of the debt of the builder, or that he was about to cease trading. When we found out about the problems the lawyer said "you did not ask", this is a lie as he gave us a list of the service he was to charge us for before we employed him. 

As for the Community fee and any debt of the seller has, then your lawyer should be aware of this, if he is doing his job properly he should inform you as the purchaser.

Sadly we employed a lawyer recomended by Atlas,  they were also tared with the same brush and dishonest.

Three years on and we still have many problems, I wonder why we were fool enough to want a place in the sun. for the price we paid we could have had wonderful holidays & no worries. 

I love my apartment In Spain & hope one day if I am not to old I will enjoy that  worry free dream I have had for years. 

 In his thread Noddy suggested using a accompany called Community fees to recovery community fees from English and irish owners. has anyone used this company and if so where they successful in getting these owners to pay their debts.

We have just enlisted the services of Communityfees.com (partly as a result of positive feedback on here). I was present (as VP) at the meeting with them and they certainly gave the impression they knew what they were doing with this process - time will tell of course.

We are still going through the Spanish legal process with some owners, but patience is a virtue it seems. Our debtors have remained constant between 50-60k (156 apartments) for around 3 years now, no matter what we do. One person (who lives in her apartment!) has never paid a penny from Day 1 in 2005.

Cheers,

Peter

 Hi Peter, Many thanks for your reply and information I will pass it on to OUR president when I am in Spain, People like you are so helpful to all those like yourselves that are suffering with the same problems, 

We have just been informed on our community that non-payers have resulted in a debt of  61,000 euro, and that, as a result, those of us who have been stumping up are to be charged an extra 20% this year while legal action is taken to recover the money.  It seems the problem is that the bank which owns the development has demanded the money and threatened to take it from the funds the community holds to pay for water and power.  In other words, they are prepared to see all the lights go out and the swimming pools turn green to get hold of these funds - a short-sighted view which would result in the devaluation of their investment as well as ours.  Presumably the law allows them to do this, just as it allows the rest of us to be held to ransom for the debts of other owners.

 Hi Carmol

It is interesting that when the banks are owed money they will do anything to get their money, no matter how much it upsets people. However, when they owe money like in our situation, they do all they can to avoid paying the debt they owe. In our case we have been trying to get the Banco Popular to pay fees outstanding on apartments they own which is almost 120,000 euros. Without this money we can not complete the installation on lifts or other jobs. My advice to anyone is do not touch the Banco Popular and watch your back if you owe them money. 

 Hi

Does anyone have any idea if there is a time limit by law on collection of community fee that is more than three years old?

Any comments would be very welcome

Thanks

Hi,

Sadly so many people are suffering because others are not paying the comminity fees.

If the community is the customer of the Utility companies,  The community can act by requesting the overdue community fees should be paid in a period of 2 or 4 weeks or any other period the community decide on. The action they take if the fees are not paid is up to the community. Take court action which could take years or cut the utility supply until the debt is paid.

Many people in Spain have no work and therefore will not be able to pay and would end up by paying a small amount a month to keep the court action happy. Unfortunatly this is not what is needed as without the community fees to pay the maintenance, those that do pay suffer and end up by subsidising the non payers.

After 2 years this action should be legal as the non payers have had plenty of time to do something about the debt. I am not sure how many years you can claim but would myself still ask for the whole debt to be paid.  Any new owner would have to pay the debt but it seems some non payers think they can work the system and carry on not paying.

My advise to you is act now and get the ball rolling, a small complex should be easier to control, sadly my apartment block has many apartments, over half of which are still to be sold to obtain community fee payers. 6 of the apartments have residents who do not pay & also abuse the the complex.

We all dream of the day that we can enjoy our beautiful Spanish Home and feel we have not made a mistake choosing Spain.

 Thank you doedoe for taking time to respond. Hope that the problems will get sorted Kind regards

If the debtors have a UK property then try GB Pimney as we tried them about 4 months ago and got some good results. Problem didn't go away but we managed to get a substantial amount of the debt back. Worth a shout.

Hi,  I am sure Maria will confirm that each community should have its own rules. However, The Spanish Property Law, I believe to say that all debts on a property are passed on to the new Owner. Though I have heard that 2 years of debt should be paid on purchase but the balance could stay as a debt. Maybe to be claimed through the Courts. As you might know this could take in excess of 10 years to claim, or even abused by paying a small amount like €5 a month.  

Would it not be wonderful to see Spanish Law changed to prevent all these dishonest builders & solicitors from cheating their customers.  Sadly to many Lawyers are tarred with the same brush and so not do the search they collect fees for.  

Maria is the best person to ask information on Spanish Law, She may not agree with all she tells you. She could agree that the Spanish Property Laws are in need of huge reform.