debtors within the community

Hi, could do with some help from others who have experienced what we are going thro now, out of our complex of 40 mixed town houses and apartments we have a number of serial non payers of community fees  amounting to 45,000 euro ...how do we go about getting this money from them... we have been told this could take years, but I thought new laws had been passed, does anyone know how we can go about getting this money (by the way these properties for the most part are rented out long term, so monies are going into their bank accounts)...help please

Mo Nueva Andalucia

Hi Mo - the system is that you have to take them to court and, yes, it does take a long time.  However, the eventual outcome is that the properties will be embargoed and then eventually sold to repay the debt owed to the community. 

Your Administrator should be pursuing this for you and making the owners aware that they risk their properties if they do not pay for the facilities they are getting rent on.  In our community we put all the details of penalties and the costs of the legal action (which is borne by the debtor) in our minutes of meetings and the AGM and this did bring in some money for us.  Our problem is that most of our debt is from banks who have repossessed most of our urbanisation!

You don't say what nationalities are involved but there is a British company which will pursue debtors in the UK for a fee and their website is:  www.communityfees.com .  Please note that I have not used them so cannot vouch for them in any way - I just got their business card from someone who said they were very good.

Good luck!

THANKS FOR THE INFO CLAIRE

I'm the person who gave the info to Claire and we are in the process of using them, to recover debts to our community it costs the Urb nothing as all fees are added to the debt, the compnay can reclaim fees from any EU state except Denmark and Spain who have not signed up to the dual agreement. With this compant it is the president who instigates the process with the help of thier Administrators,

Thank you so much, I really am grateful.