Community charges..... non-payers....direct action?

Just an update on the work that "Solutions" (Steve Kettlewell www.communityfess.com )has been doing on behalf of our Coto Real Community in chasing long overdue Debts.

Originally handed 7 Debtors, and within literally days, payment or payment arrangements organised with 5 of them totaling over €5000 with much more to come.

Then handed a further 4 to chase, now making 11 in total, awaiting results on these but I'm pretty confident it'll be a similar story.

If your Debtors are living in the UK, this is an extremely effective way of calling in the debts.

My initial advise is not to pay till accounts are clear.

As an answer to your question: a judicial action for community of owners default  in favour of the Community can be executed against the villas. If that happened , of course you can contest on the illegality of the charges.

Are you claiming against developer/agent for the misleading rental-guarantee scheme?

You said: The resort holds the tourism license therefore we can only let our villas to family and friends and many owners are facing bankrupcy. why is that you can only rent your villa to family and friends? That is quite strange.

Hi we have issues with our community of owners.  We purchased  villa on the Sands Beach Resort - previously known as Lanzarote Beach Club timeshare - Lanzarote.  Spanish also purchased on this resort therefore would have had more knowledge about community of owners than we would.  We signed our contracts with a notary however never were the By Laws explained to us at point of sale and neither were the communal fees or how high they would be.  Just under 400 Euros per month.  The By laws became an issue 2 years after the sales as we all bought under a 2 yr guaranteed rental and also received projected costs for rental after the 2nd year, however all these figures proved to be false, and we were either thrown out of leases altogther or given leases which amounted to less than 50 Euros per week before taxes.  The resort holds the tourism license therefore we can only let our villas to family and friends and many owners are facing bankrupcy.  The accounts are a joke with many anomolies, and we are not allowed to see these accounts by the way, we just get a report, because the loaded By Laws that came to light after sale gives the resort owners shares and voting rights to the reception, bars and restaurants which of course they own along with 130 villas, and we get one vote per villa.  Therefore any AGM/EGM we are immediately out voted and everything the resort owenrs/management want to pass they do so and we cannot do anything about it   We personally have been accused of owing money they lost 6 months communal fees we had paid  by DD from our bank into their account which is at the same branch and bank.  We have now received letter from the President claiming money is owed by severl owners and interest plus late payment fees of 50 Euros has been charged to the outstanding debts.

Due to the large number of debts owing a EGM has been called for on 15 September to discuss and vote on the problem of these outstanding debtors which could well be inaccurate.  What i would like to know is what happens to owners villas (as we own freeholds plus many have mortgages with banks) for failing to pay these communal fees which we know to be the highest outsdie of Madrid.  If someone knows the legal position for owners it would be greatly appreciated to have some feedback.

Personally we have been to our MEP's the European Trading Standards and we are waiting for the Spanish equivalent to respond as the European Trading Standads [passed the matter to their Spanish counterparts, however whilst all this is going on people are facing the prospect of losing everything.

We do know and are aware the Lanzarote Beach Club Timeshare people are in the process of taking legal action over a reportedly 150million Euros scam and we believe the regime is still the same regime running the place as we have been paying communl fees into old bank accounts until this year.  We have constant names changes and new bank accounts.  The whole thing is a nightmare.

Irene

These kinds of provisions are of no effect, even if they were passed by the Owners’ Committee or provided by the Articles or internal rules (Court of Appeal Toledo 18 Feb. 1998 and CA Madrid 18 Jan. 1988)

If the president or administrator stops in a certain way (by use of pressure, threats or intimidation) owners from using any facility, they can be prosecuted for coercion under section 172 of the Criminal Code

Hi can some one please tell me can our community stop people who have not payed the c/charges from using the pools these are our pool rules thanks irene

Our developer ran up arrears of over 100k during the past 14 months after they stopped paying their share of Community fees all together!

We took them to court, a process that took us approx 10 months and they or their bankers have now offered to pay the arrears in full. Our President refused to accept their offer without an undertaking from them to begin paying the fees on a monthly basis?

We were advised to levy a charge for the full amount outstanding on every property still owned by the developer/bank that effectively stopped them from selling any property without settling their debts!!

Michael J. You can not be pursued for slander as the posting in he News Board is approved by the Horizontal Law: you are following what applicable Law says on the matter.

Once you have notified the debtor that way, you can proceed to the judicial claim.  You are not liable or need to bear the burden of their defaults and their absence.

I hope this finally clarifies.

Maria

Of course, if the debtor can be contacted to try to resolve the problem, that is preferable - but in the case that they cannot be directly contacted and there is therefore no option other than to start legal proceedings, I think what Maria is telling us is that legally if a notice has been posted in the community, the debtor will be deemed to have been notified of the intent.

The only problem is that if the people are not resident they may not realise that there is a problem - and they won't see any notices on notice boards.

When a new president took over at our community he found that there were debts which had occured a few years previously, and about which the owner was unclear.  I think that you have to be sure that someone has contacted the debtor.  If this has been done, then fair enough with the name and shame.  In the case of our community, once the people concerned had realised that there was a problem the back payment was immediately paid.

I think Maria was referring to the good old fashioned bulletin board on a wall in the common area of your community. Forget technology, the old ways are best! This was mentioned somewhere else recently. I wouldn't worry about the risk of "slander" - it's common practice here to name and shame on a community notice board - presumably while it is inside community grounds, it is not considered public, therefore no problem. Perhaps Maria can confirm the legal angle?

Maria,

Thank you very much for the reply.

Unfortunately the Administrators do not have all the owners details, (I know this is not their doing), but the previous Administrators who left the records in a mess.  However, is it legal to do either or both of the following:

• Demand the details provided by the purchasers of each property from the developer/builders?
• Pursue legal claims against debtors in their absence, even knowing we can not make contact with them as we do not have the details?

You mentioned as long as we post our intentions to the community in a news board, (presumably a forum is OK), and that is enough to proceed?  I assume this would be a 'general notice' as against 'naming individuals' as we could be pursued for slander? 

If the owner claims they are not registered on the forum, have never received notification by way of email, letter etc, (even though we do not have current contact details), this is still OK?

I am just trying to prevent the situation continuing longer and longer by the debtors coming back with objections which are valid, in other words playingthe game to stretch out any action we want to take. 

Does not the admnistrato have their addresses in the Uk?

The developer needs to have same deeds and there you could find a different address.

Anyhow, and under a procedural point of view, you do not need to look for an address in the Uk but to post the claim in the news board of the community of owners in order to proceed ahead with the claim.

Hi,

New to this post so not sure if anyone can help.  We have a number of Debtors who have put their contact details as their aprtment in Spain but do not live there.  So making contact with them is impossible and they owe considerable amounts of their community charge.  Does anyone know if deeds can be viewed/accessed for their property anywhere to see if they have UK contact addresses?

Thanks

p.s. e.o.s........where is all the "squiggly" bit's come from ?

don't think you did k/sun and if you did i missed it but no matter, thank's for that, not your fault but what you said has really made my day, don't know about the one's you refer to but it seem's to me the one's in our c/plex know exactly what they are doing, they don't give a damn and simply taking the p......! out the honest rest of us (3 u.k. "owner's" 2 resident) i guess as you know, and i know it's been said before on here, the rediculous spanish law tell's us we can't turn anything off ie. water elec. etc..and nothing to stop them from renting them out..... the mind boggle's...........3 YEAR'S.....OUCH !     it's certainly ......SPAIN !  would they get away with it in u.k./ire i wonder, or would they even consider it ?  even more mind boggling ! it's enough to make you want to blow a fuse....or better still...........PULL ONE ! 

I'm sure I answered you before.....................we have one owner with an embargo and it has taken nearly 3 years to get this far. We are now awaiting the courts to sell the property. We have another owner in exactly the same position with arrears and exactly the same timescale BUT this was heard by a different judge ( although the owner has never been present ) and the judge is giving more time for the money to be paid.

No logic.........but hey, this is SPAIN.

i put this question out on this w/site quite some time ago, but got no response or an answer, so i'll ask again. has anyone heard of ,or know of ,any owner having their property embargoed or taken from them by the court's for not paying community fee's to be sold off and the procede's going back to that particular community, if so, when the court case goes ahead, what is the time scale from start to finish ?  regard's bluefox. 

Thanks for clarifying that, much clearer now. Actually seems to make perfect sense, since non residents are more likely to have other assets and/or income in their country of domicile.

Too bad the 5k debtor I know of is resident here. Anyway, we only have one non-Spanish resident owner in our community - and they are fully paid up, like everyone else too. Happy days!

Look forward to hearing how you get on with the test cases. Good luck.

We are awaiting further news with bated breath................................