15 Jan 2012 9:04 PM:
Ads - I believe the Spanish and Danish governments did not sign upto the EU legislation which allows Kettlewell or the likes to go after the debts.
DaiO - At your AGM you have to vote to take the debtors to Court. The Administrator then lodges the appropriate paperwork to the courts. This has to be done each year for the previous years debt as far as I know. All costs to do this are added on to the owners debt - i dont actually know how much this costs as our community aren't charged for this. We also add a percentage onto the unpaid fees, think it is 15%, for late payment.
Communication is the key. Speak to the owner if you can and explain the difficulties it causes and try to get upto date contact details for all owners - email addresses as well if your administrator is not posting agendas abroad.
Legally you can display the AGM minutes on your complex, which include the properties with debts. This is the nearest you can get to naming and shaming and this is where locked display cabinets come in handy.
Make sure that there is a zero tolerance approach by your committee to debtors and that this is communicated to all owners via the AGM minutes and that you will use debt collectors such as Kettlewell if necessary and that all costs will be charged to the debtor.
You can install electronic access to the pool and not give debtors a card but tell them they must go to the administrators for a card. Then the administrators get to speak to the debtor direct and hopefully get them to pay by bank card there and then. I would think this would get good results when they have rented apartment out the renters have no pool access.
There will always be someone who doesn't pay though but you could embargoe and force the sale of the apartment. We've never gone that far -YET. It is a constant battle but give them an inch and they'll take mile.
Thread:
Community charges - who pays the short fall
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