how to get non payers, to pay community charges

As a community of 3 years we now have a bad debt situation totalling just under 50K euros'. this is made up of some late payers who we know will cough up, but we do have 8 residents out of 60 who owe a full year still and 3 who it appears have never made a payment.

we are charging interst on these sums and hopefully in time we will get the money back if the apartment is sold, however legal action appears to be a waste of time with numerouse communities relating stories of years and years of time and expenditure to win and then still not get the money.

We suggested at our last AGM that the water to these apartments that the community pay for as a combined bill be turned off, making the apartment inhabitable. our administrators mumbled something about this being illegal and that they would have to look into it, 12 months on we are still no further to sorting the problem and the debt has increased.

Has anyone else experienced such direct action to resolve the matter and did it work, are there any other neat tricks the community can do to get these parasites to pay up??

interested to hear any comments and success stories.

Fortunately, we do not have anything like the problem you have. We had a couple of perpetual late payers, but since introducing a new system at the last AGM, it seems to have improved. We simply put everyone's quota up by 25%, then offered a 20% discount for everyone who either pays by direct debit or coughs up within the first 15 days of each quarter. You do the maths, you'll figure it out!

As for those that just don't pay, ever - thank God we don't have that problem (I'm president of our small community, and that's one major headache I can do without!). Since we've not had to go through it ourselves, I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I know that another community that uses the same administrator as us had a similar problem, and I had a brief chat with their president once when we met at the admin. office. He told me that they had gone down the legal route, and within a year, I believe, got a result inasmuch as the court had ordered the bad-debtors to pay. What happened next, sorry, I don't know. But it does suggest that the courts can get things moving if you are patient. I would expect your administrator to initiate proceedings if these debts have been outstanding for 3 years now.

Sorry I can't be of more help. I wish you the best of luck. Please let us know how things work out.

Hi,

This is a quick reply. If you need more info please let me know.

I have lived in my urbanization for 15 years. We have a lot of owners who owe community fees and after many meetings (with a lawyer present) we are now denouncing debtors.

The court process is long, but the debtors property becomes embargoed, which prevents him/her selling it or using it to secure any further loans, as the embargoed property will eventually be sold cheaply at public auction, most owners eventually pay up.

IMHO it is important for a community to show a tough stance right from the outset, as any sign of weakness will be exploited by people who want to own investment property at the expense of the community in general.

I am sorry to say that embargo is the magic word and if you don’t jump on defaulters early, others will follow their lead.

Thanks for these two replies, we had already planned to propose the increased charges with a discount for prompt payment as per another thread you had contributed to.

The "embargoed property" route is also very interesting, does this mean that you can "embargo" the owners personal sale of apartment, whilst the community is going through the legal process to get its money back by selling the property cheaply at auction. The knowledge that the owner now has a ticking clock running against them and the only way to stop it is to pay up would worry some owners, others obviously wouldnt care.

Our "quick fix" idea of removing the water supply would make the apartment inhabitable for the owners (some of whome are permanant residents) and guests they rent the property to, have you seen or heard of this being done anywhere and do you know if this is illegal for a community to arrange to have this done by an external maintenance contractor......and charge them 100 euro's for doing so and another 100 to turn it back on if and when they pay up?

Hi,

It is illegal to prevent anyone ( even non payers ) using any Community amenity.........although I am aware some Commuities do so.

The only recourse is to Law..................and that is very slow.

An embargo can only be placed on a property by a court................you can't just go and sell the property willie nillie ! ( however much you may feel like it ! )

Our Community now charges 20% the day after the debt is due and 300€ if it's not paid 1 month later.........................if the Community Lawyer has to send a Beurofax ( which starts the legal process ) another 700€ is charged. Until the recent AGM these costs were very much less but it was decided to up the costs because if the debtor owed less than 300€, the Community had to pay to take them to court.................and as we pay our fees twice a year ( 150€ ) we were having to wait a full year before taking any action.

We have debts of about 11,ooo€ and at least two of these have never paid at all........................it is unfortunate that for these two, the court costs which they will have to pay far exceed the debt !

But you need to remember that even if you get a judgement then you still have to get the money. Yes you will probably get an embargo.....................thre is rarely a justification for not paying Community fees..........................but if the person has sold or lives only part time in Spain.................then the process of Spanish law takes ages......................and your stress levels will go up and up and up............................take it from one who knows  !!

It is not the administrator's place to suggest law, the Community must instruct the Presidente at an AGM or EGM.

Hope this helps  ???

Hi,

Thanks! Some very useful information has been posted in this thread. I think the secret is, to strike quickly as soon as 1 or 2 owners start to default.

I really like the idea of putting fees up, so that you can then offer a discount to prompt payers.

My urbanization comprises 116 dwellings and ownership has become 50% Spanish and 50% British. The urb. is now 20 yrs old and about 4 years ago the bad debtors had reached 15%. This meant that there wasn’t enough coming in to meet basic costs and certain services had to be suspended.

 A campaign of court action was adopted 3 years ago. One owner is close to having his property sold by public auction, but most of the debtors have now either coughed up or come to an agreement with the administrator to catch up by paying in regular instalments.

I have been close to selling both my apts. and moving to a classier urbanization.

Hi Grazy

What are you writing your post with?, strange texts between sentences

John

Karensun

Thanks for your comments, however your first line is a little ambiguous...

It is illegal to prevent anyone ( even non payers ) using any Community amenity.........although I am aware some Commuities do so.

Is this another case of the law is an ass?  i dont understand in law how it could be illegal to stop someone using something that they dont pay for, on that precident, driving your car away without your permission would not be illegal, unless it contravines the law relating to communities and having read the Horizontal laws last night for the first time i didnt spot anything that appeared to say that, perhaps someone with more experience could help out here?

what examples and repercussions are you aware of when other communities have taken direct action and were they successful, as i'm sure it must take as long to get get their water turned back on and to sue the community as it does for the community to sue them.

Every thread of this and other topics says that communities are spending years and many hundreds of euro's to sue these people.

The idea of possibly implementing a charge equal to the debt amount for starting legal proceedings against these people , due to the time it takes, makes the whole thing more economically viable and then to add more legal charges as it goes on could cover the costs many years down the line.....if you get your money.

The main concern is that with this knowledge why should anyone bother to pay their fees as they know it takes so long to sue they may as well leave their money in the bank and rent it as much as possible over the 3 years and then take whatever is left after the lawyers sell it at auction...without doing the sums it may evenbe a viable business if you only pay the first installment of your mortgage and dont pay that either........but then not all of us are crooks!!

I had a similar situation a few years back, albeit on a much smaller scale, in a property with only four owners, but one wasn't paying their quota of shared expenses. With four or less owners in a property, I believe, there is no legal requirement to form an official community, so we didn't even have any formal system in place for collecting the money, just a sort of "gentlemans" agreement, which didn't make things any easier. We did discuss the possibility of cutting off water to the non-payer, but were advised this was illegal under any circumstances. Apparently, even the water board cannot stop someone's supply, even if they never pay their bills. Something to do with sanitation, I think.

I'm afraid the only proper course of action is the legal route through the courts. Take a deep breath.......

Hi John,

You wrote

(Hi Grazy

What are you writing your post with?, strange texts between sentences

John)

Ans: I am typing in MS Word and then copying and pasting into this forum. The display is perfect when viewed in Mozilla. What browser are you using?

I have typed the above directly into the forum's box.

Regards

Grazy

PS: Anyother members getting a wierd display on my posts, please be kind enough to let me know. Thanks!

Grazy

i was  getting the weird display as well.......but not in your last post, asking about the weird display?

I get weird display in Internet Explorer

Alan