Debtors without a Budget

Is it possible to have debtors without a budget ever being presented?

We are a new urbanisation, we had an AGM about 18 months ago and no budget was presented, most of us were under the impression that we were one 'happy' urbanisation.

At that time we were not a legal entity. Since then the administrator has registered us but we find that we have been split up into five separate entities and the developer has passed the individual presidencies over to the person who was president of the single unit.

We have just had a call to an EGM, with one of the agenda items being; Budget for the economic year 2010. Amongst the paperwork was an 18 page list of debtors with what looks like debts going back to 2006!

To my suspicious mind this looks like a ploy to stop us from rocking the boat by declaring us as debtors and preventing us from voting either to replace the president or the administrator. Am I paranoid?

The same thing happened on our community.

Received the minutes of the April AGM - with no mention of debtors etc - and then suddenly an EGM was called in the summer to discuss over €2,000 of debt!!  It concerned five families - who hadn't had time to run up this debt since the AGM!

They must have a different way of accounting!!!!!!

 The thing is that you are liable for community fees on your property from the moment you sign the escritura.  The problem comes when the administrator doesn't have all your details and cannot start billing you for your community fees.  With new urbanisations it can take a few months to get up and running and that is why you may be hit with a big community fees bill, as you can have several months outstanding. The first year is definitely the most difficult.

Justin

What would these fees cover? We have never had a budget submitted.

The fees cover everything required to run the community.  Lifts, community lighting, pool, gardens, general maintenance, etc.

I think in your case I would probably seek some legal advice.  If no budget was submitted and your urbanisation was not fully registered then maybe you won't have to pay the community fees going back to 2006.

Have you paid any community fees at all up to this point?

Justin 

We have not paid anything by way of community charges and we were only registered as a legal entity last May/June.

I am on the same development as Dennis

Does this mean that we have to pay for items that have not been handed over by the developer or snagged by the community otherwise we are payng for unfinished items?

I assume that the 'debt' arises from the Administrators fee (200euros per year).

I shall be seeking clarification at the EGM in a weeks time.

Most developers are in financial trouble so yours is probably now looking to get some money back after paying all the fees so far.

If you have not paid anything so far then you will have a debt to pay, especially if the development does have its occupation licence.

Have a read of this article for more info on communities and fees.

You will be able to review the new budget at the next AGM.  If your development has been up and running since 2006 then the administrator should have a good feel as to what it costs to run your community.  The budget should therefore be quite a realistic one.

Good luck with it.

Justin

I've read the article and this bit sticks in my throat!

"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"

Ours is nowhere near completed. So how do we become responsible before then?

At what stage does the development get it's occupation licence and who from?

It looks like the debt is a retrospective charge for the developers maintenance of the site back to 2006 when people started to move onto the building site that it has remained since. The only real maintenance they have done is in the areas leading up to show houses, so potential customers are given some eye candy!

I think we are going to have to persue the legal route as our President and Administrators are prooving to be chocolate tea pots!

Has your Urbanisation been 'handed' over by the builder to you? If it has you MUST have had a meeting AGM where this was done. At this meeting the budget etc would have been agreed.

If you are not happy with what the builder is handing over i do not think you have to accept it, however if you have had the meeting and accepted the Urb you are stuck with it. Of course what does happen often is that there are lots of unsold properties ( that the builder is still responsible for ) but that also gives the builder lots of voting power.

The other thing is that often the builder/promoter has vast experience of how the system works and you tend to get press ganged into things you don't understand and don't agree with.

Each individual owner SHOULD get a habitation certificate. You should have had that before you signed for your property ( although we did not get ours until a year after we had signed at the Notary, but that was 7 years ago and things have changed somewhat since then ) I don't think the Urbanisation gets a habitation certificate as the Communal areas are not 'lived in'.

Our fees saga gets more complicated by the day!

Minutes have now appeard of a Constitution meeting held before our properties were either sold or in some cases built. This meeting was attended (only) by the developers representative - as they owned all the houses. This meeting established the Constitution, elected the management committee (the developer), Approved the community statutes and set the initial budget/community fees.

A further set of minutes, dated after a lot of the houses were sold and paid for, of a meeting with the same developer still claiming to own all the properties. That meeting ratified the decisions made at the earlier one and adopted a new Administrator.

Running parallel with this the community was swanning along having it's own AGMs changing administrators along the way. We even recruited the Administrator the developer adopted in the above meeting after ours. He subsequently never saw fit to inform us of this parallel universe we were living in!

The minutes state:

MINUTES Nº 1. OF THE EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING Of. CONSTITUTION OF THE OWNERS COMMUNITY <>, SITUATED IN URBANIZACION LAS KALENDAS, EL CASTILLEJO, IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF FORTUNA (MURCIA), CELEBRATED ON MARCH 20

TH. 2006 (MONDAY).

The minutes go on to list the 130 properties in the community.

*Note: I've X'd the DNI just in case I'm doing some wrong by revealing it.

The following agenda is listed:

As you can see there was only one attendee.

The second, ratification, meeting had the same description in the Attending part.

ATTENDING: D. VALENTÍN BOTELLA ROS, CON D.N.I. Nº XXXXXXX*, acting in the name of and representing the company of PROCUMASA, S.A., builder and sole owner of the houses which form this urbanisation. The houses owned by the builder are the following:

Much what I thought!

Our only problem is the legacy of these. We inherited a annual Community fee that no one new about and are all debtors as a consequence plus all the other bits.

We are thinking of persuing this matter legaly - would we have a hope in hell of getting them overturned?

Correct me if i´m wrong, but if a owner owns more then one property  they have only one vote anyway ¿.

If this is the case why don´t you just call a meeting of owners vote in a President and a Administration company (after contacting the THE ADMINISTRATOR OF FINCAS IN YOUR AREA) who will advise you of administrators in your area , and any good company should do this free of charge if they want your business.

As you live in the Murcia area and you don´t have a office of this official body in your area which will be a suprise, let me know and i can give you the Alicante branch where they may be able to help you.

NITRAM

At this moment in time I'm sure the owners have a majority under both elements, but are disenfranchised because of the surprise arrival of this community fees debt on all of us.