Hi Jim,
Firstly a thanks to ReidPJ for his kind comments, I am the Barry that he illustrates as the President of MCC and we do indeed have over 800 properties and a very diverse ownership status from the whole of Europe including some Spanish, owner occupiers, investors with several properties, owners who have never used the property and seemingly never will.
We have had a series of Presidents and Administrators, who collectively drove the urbanisation to the point of bankruptcy in September 2009... a gross debt of some €175k and accumulating at a rate of some 10k per month. We had an unfinished urbanisation where 50% of the houses had generators supplying electricity, an unfinished water supply with outages July / August which was in fact administered and controlled by our administrator. Despite all this in September 2009 at the AGM the outgoing president actually sponsored an increase in the budget expenditure ( of course supported by the administrator) which would have sent the debt ever higher and certain bankruptcy with the ensuing cost to each owner.
Our existing suppliers by their own admission, let's say were in the pockets of the administrator, the administrator tried to rig the election process and force us down the court route in order that the owners could choose their own president and committee, it took 3 months for an EGM to overwhelmingly make him realise his time was up..... BUT still he persevered and would not pass over all of the community documents for another 3 months, finally he resigned but not after various and many threats and an attempt to discredit us by denying his resignation was offered.
It was a salutary lesson about administrators and one that we shall never forget, they have one goal... to make money from an urbanisation which in itself is fine, they however are almost always understaffed to complete the task, they have no affinity with the urbanisation and absolutely no empathy with owners and their problems and prepared to use any method to increase their income..
Since elected, we are now in our second year we have, eradicated debt, have private owner comm fee debt at a monthly level of 5% or less ( previously more than 30%), have money in the reserve fund that exceeds our legal commitment, have connected most of the estate to Iberdrola and have just been given the green light for the remainder, completed the water infrastructure which has rendered the outages in July and August a thing of the past we have progressively reduced our monthly expenditure from €46k down to €20k we have no administrator and employ on an as needs basis the advice of an English speaking Abogado and professional translators... as Peter has kindly said we have been very successful and we are now in a position to invest in our living environment.
That success has been due to the formidable team of owners with many skills amongst them who have worked tirelessly to bring us back from a position of utter despair to one of a bright future, smiling faces, good community spirit and above all contented owners (in the main)... no longer is there the 'we are being ripped of mindset' that gives the opportunity for people to refuse to pay, we are trusted and provide as much information as is possible including regular meaningful updates, quarterly statements and 6 monthly reconciled accounts and balance sheet details to all owners. We also open a community office staffed by members of the team 3 days a week, we have a German/ English/ Spanish interpretor on hand for 2 of those openings.
We have been able to achieve this because of ..
1) The size of the team that was prepared to stand with Myself and the VP ( the only 2 elected people)
2) The dedication of those people during some very difficult times and the amount of quality hours they have been prepared to commit to the cause.
3) The trust and understanding afforded us by all but a very small handful of the previous regimes and even that situation has begun to wane at last.
4) We treat the urbanisation as our own ( the communities) business with a turnover of some €400k plus.
We undertake ALL tasks we have built our own database, a team that chases our own debts with some help from the agencies that have sprung up especially in the UK, have not taken a single owner to court since we were elected, we are still dealing with the backlog from that route some 5 years down the line !!! We manage through various teams our suppliers and banks, we have a specialist team that run our accounts and another team that report them on a management basis. We have a specialist and highly experienced team that have driven and guided our successful electricity and water projects and even our own IT team that have built up our IT system and database and manages it's use and improvement.
One thing we had to do was win the help and trust of the local Ayuntamiento AND the almost bankrupt Developer ( who does not pay comm fees), that took some time but those relationships have been key elements of our ability to deal with the many problems we had and the ones we have remaining.
In summary John and to all of you frustrated Presidents or rudderless communities the message from here is clear... you can do it if you have the people 'willing to get stuck in', you will need some experience, I work in Spain for a multinational and that has helped understand the 'Spainish way' and we have some retired professionals from the UK and Europe together with ordinary people who wanted to contribute to helping us emerge from where we were, you will need to be extremely firm with and resist threats from the current Administrator and even that profession.... but HPL clearly gives you the right to manage your own destiny regardless of the statutes that are in place in your urbanisation, we took advice on this and got the all clear.
If you need or want to do it go for it.... I am certain you will benefit from the move and your eyes will be opened to what Administrators really do get up to as opposed to what we think they do. If you need any further advice don’t hesitate to email or PM me
Best regards
Barry MCC
This message was last edited by Fighter2 on 19/08/2011.
This message was last edited by Fighter2 on 19/08/2011.
This message was last edited by Fighter2 on 19/08/2011.
This message was last edited by Fighter2 on 19/08/2011.
This message was last edited by Fighter2 on 19/08/2011.