How does a Community Work?

In setting up our community website i added a few useful editorials i picked up, this may help you?

Took this off a website as it gives a very clear explanation of the community charge system.

What is a comunidad de propietarios?

Properties located in a development, popularly known as “urbanisations” in Spain; usually share communal facilities such as gardens, and services such as those of a maintenance person. All new urbanisations are the responsibility of the promoter or builder until they are all completed and sold. The responsibility is then handed to the comunidad de propietarios (the community of property owners) which you automatically join when you buy your property in Spain. Spanish law gives legal status to this community so that it can regulate the joint ownership of common property e.g. gardens, pools etc

Once you have completed on your property, you are notified and invited to attend a meeting to formally hand over the responsibility of general upkeep of the collective properties to a newly formed community of owners. Amongst the owners, someone must be elected as President and another as Vice President. An administrator is also elected, although for the first year it is normal practice to use the administrator put in place by the developer. The administrator and the committee members sort out the day to-day business of the community and call meetings when matters arise. The committee is annually elected. They hold yearly meetings during which a budget is approved by the Owners covering the expenses for the year. This budget is then divided between owners depending on the percentage contribution for each property as set out in the title deeds.

In some urbanisations where there are a mixture of houses and apartments, the apartment owners tend to pay a higher community fee than the house owners. In the urbanisation where we live owners of a two bedroom first floor apartment pay 170 euros per quarter, whereas the owners of a three-bed roomed town house pay just 55 euros per quarter. This is surprising, but you must consider that the area around apartments incur more expenses e.g. stairwell cleaning and lighting, lift maintenance, garage cleaning and maintenance etc. There are numerous factors which determine the cost of community fees including:

The number of apartments that share a block.
The more there are, the more there are to share the cost
The position. The higher you go the more you pay and you may also be charged more for enjoying a view!
The total number of properties in an urbanisation. The size of a development (total area).
In some rather unfair cases where a development consists of many phases, owners of completed phases may be expected to temporarily subsidise the community fees of the uncompleted phases. This is because the green areas, the pools etc which are intended for the entire use of the development still need to be maintained. We heard of a case in Marbella, where the owners of the completed phase are paying one thousand euros per month community charges. The construction of the other phases hasn’t yet started so it is likely that they will continue to pay this for the next few years! Seems very unfair really.

The percentage of the budget that each property pays is set in the Title Deeds (escritura) as this is determined by the developer. The Community fees are normally paid quarterly or half-yearly depending on the Community. Expenses vary according to services required and include salaries and social security for those employed by the community (gardeners, pool attendants, hall porters etc), repairs, electricity for the lighting of common areas, administration fees.

Every owner must pay their community fees on the date set by the members at the Annual General Meeting. If any of the members fail to pay the community fees, the President or the Administrator may claim the debt, previous authorisation of the community members, in the Court of First Instance from the city where the block of flats is located, and even have the property sold at auction to recover unpaid charges.

The Town Hall will also make a charge for the Rubbish collection (Basura) from your property or development. This can be charged annually or quarterly depending on the Municipality in which you are purchasing the property. In certain cases, this may be included in your community fees.

In certain municipalities, there is an annual charge for the Recycling Tax (Tratamiento de Residuos). This covers the recycling of waste from the numerous glass, paper, and battery banks that are distributed throughout the area. Again in some cases, this may be included within the Community fee.

Most properties have electricity and water meters and you will be charged according to the amount of each consumed. Some communities will only have one meter for the whole development and therefore include the water in the Community Fees.

Ahhhhhh I understand a little more now! 

Thanks both for the info :-)

If only changing the community President was straightforward. We have had the same president since completion 2yrs ago despite trying to vote otherwise at the AGM's.

When the President is also the representative of the developers (grupo jale) and they still have 51% of the properties still on their books they hold the majority.

The views and wishes of the people who actually own/live on site are not uppermost in the developers minds. Control is!! 

It is not just in Spain that you can have problems with administrators. I have had experience of owning an apartment in a comlex the the UK, and the developer kept one apartment so he could hold the "Golden Share" so the other Leaseholders views were ignored. The developer appointed the firm responsible for the maintenance of the complex, and they were abysmal. They took an 8% fee from the insurance charge, which was about £10K, and had associated companies supplying some of the maintenance. We exerted severe pressure on them for a period of 2years; with a large number of leaseholders delaying the payment of fees; and they finally they gave up. We now have a new company which has been selected by us and the service we get is excellent.

Everyone need to remember that the issues on these pages are just typical of owning a property in a complex no matter which country it is in.

In answer to original post - There's also a list (titled Relation of Pending Receipts) of residents with different amount of monies next to their name -

Unfortunately,  I think you will find this refers to the community fees still outstanding from various owners. This is one of the biggest problems facing many communities; when some owners don't pay up on time, and as a result there are insufficient funds in the kitty, communal facilities and more importantly essential routine maintenance start to get neglected. In a new community, this can give the developer the perfect get-out; unless there is concrete proof to the contrary, the developer will simply claim that, for example, the poor condition of the garden is due to the community's lack of maintenance, rather than that they failed to deliver what was promised. (See my next article on being president, A Year In The Life Of The President - part 3, coming soon to EOS!)

In answer to davey, the developer cannot hand over to the community until the Licence Of First Occupation has been issued by the local authority. When handing over, if not all the properties have been sold, the developer should pay the quota for these, but in reality probably won't. Any one got experience of this? As for whether each block in a community has it's own rules, I suppose that depends on the individual development and what is decided by the community, but if there are any shared facilities (e.g. pool or gardens) then surely there has to be one set of rules for everyone?  

Hello Roberto

Thanks for the information, look forward to reading your next article. Any other inforamtion, on how the community works will be appreciated.  

Nice to hear things are going smoothly in your community. We are having our AGM next month and are planning to implement a system to either fine late payers or offer a discount to prompt payers (same cat different smell). I think this is a subject which will be of interest to many.

Enjoy your loungers this summer!

Just wanted to share this gem with you all:

I was talking to a friend today, who recently attended their annual community meeting. Since there were NO volunteers for the role of president, they had to draw straws. Legally, every community member is obliged to take their turn at some point, so if nobody steps forward, this is how it has to be decided.

The lucky winner was an Englishman, who does not live in Spain, and was not at the meeting. So for now he is blissfully unaware of his new role. But here's the best bit.........he OWES 2 and a half years community fees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How does a community work? Beats me!