25 Apr 2010 4:21 PM:
The majority of costs in the resort in question stem from community property held by the resort.
There is little in the way of sub community property excepting garages and apartment block lift areas.
All the pools and most of the gardens/town centre are held in the resort community property even when they are all in the middle of apartment communities.
Resort fees do not follow the cuota distribution. This is where the bulk of fees are.
There has been very little dispute over the sub community fee distribution except an occasional owner saying one town house has more garden than them but has slightly lower fees.
The dispute has been about the distribution of resort costs.
As you say the majority of communities voted to have the distribution of fees based on a formula at the heart of which was surface area in the town hall records.
Fair enough.
However there were several communities rejected this and wanted to have the cuota. They have objected for a long time since the illegal imposition of the non cuota system.
At least one of the communities has voted on suing the resort about this and this motion was passed in March 2010. The process is moving forward rather than anyone walking away. There were 10 communities voted against the surface area system.
I have read in more than one place and told by an administrator that if an owner or community does not want to adopt a fee distribution system that is not based on the cuota system, as described in the Horizontal Property Act, despite other owners voting for this, they have a right to demand their fees are on the basis of cuota. Just like the rest of Spain.
That is all I came to ask. I will get the answer and it will be fact not opinion.
There is opinion where the law is grey but many times it is quite clear.
The law will either allow this or not. If the law allows this, then there is no opinion in it, only the law.
The case law dug up by the administrator applied to a case where the dispute centred on voting rights and cuota. It did not involve fees.
It may have been the legal opinion that this could be extrapolated to the fee situation and was being used to justify using the surface area as the basis of the new fee distribution. It would be a valid argument and there is much to recommend it. v There is the issue of town house and villa gardens which would complicate matters but it is a useful basis to move forward with.
I have discovered there has always been the right of owners to decide amongst themselves to vary the distribution of fees in ways other than the cuota. So there was never any need for case law to justify owners deciding to change the fee distribution.
There is no case law to justify the imposition of a new fee distribution system, which is what had happened.
Now many communities have voted to legally adopt the surface area system, fair enough - but there were several communities - so called independent communities and probably plenty of owners within the other communities who do not want this system.
Are they forced to have a fee system they don't want and costs them significantly more than would be the case if the cuota system in the Horizontal Property Act were to apply?
As I say I found this in a couple of sources and wanted to know if it were true or not.
Thread:
Resort AGM
--------------------------------------