Outstanding Community Fees in terms of the Horizontal Law

Can Maria De Castro please tell me when prescription runs out in terms of the Horizontal Law. We have Commercial Property Debt (Locals) amounting to Euros 420,730.46 (including overdue interest) as at 29/08/2018. These Debts have been accumulating since the year 2000. I believe Debts up to 4 years are only recoverable in terms of the Law. Surely then, some of this debt should have been wriiten off the Books already.

Thank You

Have your President and Administrator not commenced a Monitorio process against Spanish Debtors?

If banks have repossessed any of the properties the banks will only pay current year plus 3 previous years fees but I believe you can still pursue the original owner for debts prior to this, especially IF they are solvent or have other assets.

Time barring for community of owners fees born before 7th of October 2015 is the soonest of these two dates:

a) 15 years since it was due

b) 7th of October 2020

If the debt was born any date after 7th October 2015, time barring is 5 years

Can failure of an owner to pay a community fine result in withdrawing of voting at an AGM OR AN EGM? If so, how long before such a barring comes into effect?

If the fine has been legally imposed and the owner have not challenged it, that is a debt with the community and therefore, according to provision 15.2 of Horizontal Property Act, you can be part of disussions carried out in meetings but not to vote, till debt is paid.

Is it correct to assume now that payment of accumulated debt is being PURPOSEFULLY delayed by debtors as opposed to those who require additional time to pay (is this  mostly the Banks or is it a growing number of private individuals ?) in order to write off the debts, given the current time constraints identified?

BUT have other law abiding owners within the community been expected to absorb these purposeful  debts in these lengthy interim and ongoing periods, due to the shortfall in community monies?

How does the existing system effectively deal with the financial burdens born from purposeful delay?

Doesn’t this expose a major failure in the system and horizontal property act if it is not effectively protecting the community of owners ability to gain timely enforcement with regard to the payment of debt and thereafter these time constraints only incentivise abuse?

Doesn’t this now result in a growing vulnerability affecting all community owners that needs to be exposed not only to the law makers but also to the media?. Have good community administrators who have owners interests at heart not thought of coming together en masse to identify these stark realities to the media?

Sadly it appears that any incentive to address this issue of timely enforcement will only happen when declining sales of community properties start to impact the Spanish economy as more and more potential purchasers become aware of the financial threat from purposeful delay of this nature.