Community law solicitor - Orihuela Costa

Does anyone know of a lawyer/solicitor on the Orihuela Costa who is has a superb knowledge of Horizontal Law. Our community President is trying to implement sanctions on us, which we feel are against the law and we need to speak to an expert. Cheers Marlene

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Your President can do no more or less than you give him a mandate at for at the AGM... if you have statutes and he is merely enforcing them it is one of his duties and is not an imposition.

Regards

Barry

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He is not proposing statute changes per se, but other rules....like employing a self funding "enforcer" to enforce poole rules, I.e showering before swimming, use of inflatables, topless bathing, etc., etc. He is also telling owners who rent that he wants a list of names and addresses of their renters, sight of their tax returns, because they should be paying tax on their income, copies of H&S fire inspection certificates, etc., etc., There is a lot more than this and he is proposing electronic voting so it makes it more difficult to find out other people's views on these proposals. Surely some of the stuff he is proposing has nothing to with him!

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Pool rules and the like may be part of the statutes, if they are not and he has not been given a mandate at any AGM or EGM to go down his chosen route of enforcement he is out of order.

H&S certs for fire inspection of a block of apartments I suppose is a legal requirement to have this aspect checked and certificated and therefore reasonable that he or the committee get copies of those certificates.

Regarding details of renters it is absolutely none of his business and tax returns are a personal document that no one has a right to see.

Request formally that he ceases such activity and if he refuses ask him to call an EGM, if he also refuses that request speak with your neighbours and get 25% of them to write to the President calling for an EGM... he cannot legally refuse that request.

Electronic voting is fine and if you are afraid that exchanges of opinion are restricted ask EoN to set up a forum for your urbanisation where everyone can exhange opinions and not just those that attend meetings.

How many owners are there and what is the background to his actions?

Regards

Barry

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Hi Barry,

Sorry I didn't get back to your post.  The issues we have are complex that it why I want to seek legal advice.  It is difficult to speak to neighbours as only 4 houses on a urbanisation of 47 are occupied full time, two of these being belonging to the President and Vice President.  So trying to speak to other owners is not that easy.  The President has called an EGM for three weeks time and I can't see many owners attending,plus he has instigated an electronic voting form, so this makes it diffucult to discuss the issues at hand.

Also our urbanisation is sort of split into two area, pool side and garden side, most of our issues come from the people who live pool side.

One thing he does appear to be hammering home is that we are a residential complex and not a holiday complex.  I know from speaking to my neighbours that when they bought their properties, the rental potential was highlighted to them.  How can I find out if what he is saying is true? 

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Hi

A strange thing to 'push' but the definition of residential and holiday homes will be defined in the escrituras of your properties, if they are residential homes they will be classified as Urbanistica, if they are Holiday homes then they are Touristica. Essentially the difference is that a Touristica home is not meant to be occupied on a 100% basis but how that is policed is not known and in our particular area of Mazarron we have a Urbanisation that has some homes classified as Touristica but they are occupied full time by the owners without comeback.

Not sure at all why he should be trying to define the difference but you say in your first message that he is trying to impose sanctions on 'us' suggesting that you are not the only objector... if that is the case you really need to gather support for the EGM in order to object to what he is trying to 'impose'.

I will reiterate he cannot impose anything on anyone... the leading figure in the governing body of any community is the General Assembly, only they can make decisions and that includes you who have an equal right to anyone including the President.

By all means seek legal advice from a solicitor or perhaps go to see another administrator who I'm sure will back your thoughts if he sees a prospect of getting control of your urbanisation and I have known them make some robust interruptions at General Meetings to secure victory... would be difficult though if you are in a minority but if he really is trying to operate outside of legitimacy then it might make him think again

Good luck but at the end of the day the majority view will always prevail.

Barry

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