ADMINISTRATION

Hi, we are a Community of 101 properties and although our Community charge is very low in comparasion to some mentioned on here (300) we are still trying to make economies.  One third of our charges goes on the Communal Pool, one third on daily running costs and future savings, and one third goes to the Administrators.  It is the latter that is of concern to most owners.  The problem is that, as with most Administrators, they are not very good at their job.  We (as in the President and Vice President ) do everything for them including the accounts, the agendas for meetings and even the minutes.  Most of the Community would rather dispense with the Administrators and pay us (obviously a lot less)  Does anyone have any idea of the problems this would pose, is it done on your urbanisation, and how would we get the minutes registered.  We have no problems employing a translater so that all documents would be firstly in Spanish then English and also no problem employing a Lawyer should the need arise.

 Spam post or abuse? Please let us know

You may be opening your own 'can of worms' here. Firstly you need to take legal advice as to what all this entails. Then you need to realise that you will probably have to pay your administrator until the end of their contract. Also you would need to know your way around the Spanish sysyem for recording minutes and finances and any legal action you may need to take.

Then the idea of you taking over as 'administrators' would have to be put to your AGM and voted upon.

I feel that if you were recieving payment from your Community then you would need to be registered for Spanish tax etc.

The more obvious problems could occur when a member of the Community is not happy with what you do or the financial arrangements made...................there is 'nowt so funny as folk' when it comes to money, no matter what they say at the outset.

Some friends of ours, on a nearby urb. attempted this and thier lives were made a nightmare and they had to quickly revert back to an administrator, who then charged them more!!

Have you spoken to your administrator about all this??  If you have and the situation has not altered, perhaps it is time to look for another, which again would need to go through your AGM if you wanted to change.

My hubby is Presidente and also does the agenda for the AGM....................as is his job ( the administrator takes his / her instruction from the Presidente. He also checks the minutes before he signs them and he knows to the penny where the Community money has gone. Our administrators are also accountants, but keeping check of the finances is a sensible thing to do.

Whatever you do, you really need to get advice from a Spanish Lawyer so you know exactly what you are letting yourselves in for in the Legal sense and then think long and hard about your Community's possible reaction if things go wrong.

 Spam post or abuse? Please let us know

You have got a full serie of articles on Horizontal Law Act in this website, so you can know exactly what your rights are before the Administrator. You can challenge his/her proffessional activity according to that Law, out and in Courts.

 

I

 Spam post or abuse? Please let us know

I agree with all Karen's points.

I believe there is a standard scale of charges for registered administrators, but I'm not sure. If you are concerned about how much they are charging for their services, probably best to discuss this directly with them to start with. Ultimately you may decide (as a community) to look for a new administrator, but I would not recommend taking on the role yourselves, for the reasons Karen gave.

I also prepare the agenda (after all, I know what we need to discuss better than the administrator, since I have my finger on the pulse, so to speak, on a day in day out basis). I also check the minutes and invariably make plenty of alterations before I'm satisfied to send them out. I also go through the accounts with a fine tooth comb before signing them off. All this I believe is the duty of the president. However, I do expect the administrator to "do" the accounts first (not that that's particularly hard - it's all on the computer anyway), and I do expect them to produce the minutes and ammend them to my instructions etc. But that's basicaly just the secretarial part of their role. What is more important to me, is knowing that I have a qualified professional who is knowledgable in Spanish law and familiar with the details of communities to turn to for advice and guidance in running our community. Ours is only a small community, but even here there are plenty of things that can go wrong, and in your case, I would certainly not want to take on the legal responsibility of running the community, without the back-up of a paid professional.

 Spam post or abuse? Please let us know

Hi Thanks for all your replies.  We are on our second set of Administrators and although these were good (well attentive) for the first year, not one single owner can get a reply from them despite letters or emails, but yet get instant answers when they come to us direct.  We can see what you all are saying and of course are taking great notice.  It seems that speaking with other Presidents in the area that all the Administrators are much of the same, and the Community as a whole (well there will always be the one exception) are fed up with paying 810 euros a month for effectively nothing.

I agree it is the Presidents job to do all that you have listed, the accounts they send through every other month (we request them every month but never get them) are always, without exception, wrong.  They bring us the bank statements, sometimes two months old but still unopened. Any problems we have either with the pool, the council or the drains, despite many calls and emails we have to sort ourselves.  As we say we write the agenda, post it and also give it out to those resident or visiting around the time.  We write the minutes (last years were not translated into Spanish for three months as we kept asking for copies to put in the notice board and it took this long to get them) so infact all they do is chair the A.G.M. and lodge the minutes and finance report (we hope).  We are getting quotes from other Administraters, and the current ones realise that it is already on the agenda to replace/dispense with them, but the thought of yet another set of Administrators to deal with is not filling us with much confidence.  I will however, on your suggestions contact the ones we have at the moment and see if we can come to some better financial arrangement, e.g. we pay them just when we need them!  Think I already know what they will say!

 Spam post or abuse? Please let us know