Communities in Spain

Properties located in a development, popularly known as"urbanisations" in Spain; usually share communal facilities suchas gardens, and services such as those of a maintenance person. All new urbanisations are the responsibility of the promoter orbuilder until they are all completed and sold. Theresponsibility is then handed to the comunidad de propietarios(the community of property owners) which you automatically joinwhen you buy your property in Spain. Spanish law gives legalstatus to this community so that it can regulate the jointownership of common property e.g. gardens, pools etcOnce you have completed on your property, you are notified andinvited to attend a meeting to formally hand over theresponsibility of general upkeep of the collective properties toa newly formed community of owners. Amongst the owners, someonemust be elected as President and another as Vice President. Anadministrator is also elected, although for the first year it isnormal practice to use the administrator put in place by thedeveloper. The administrator and the committee members sort outthe day to-day business of the community and call meetings whenmatters arise. The committee is annually elected. They holdyearly meetings during which a budget is approved by the Ownerscovering the expenses for the year. This budget is then dividedbetween owners depending on the percentage contribution for eachproperty as set out in the title deeds.In some urbanisations where there are a mixture of houses andapartments, the apartment owners tend to pay a higher communityfee than the house owners. In the urbanisation whe...

...re we liveowners of a two bedroom first floor apartment pay 170 euros perquarter, whereas the owners of a three-bed roomed town house payjust 55 euros per quarter. This is surprising, but you mustconsider that the area around apartments incur more expensese.g. stairwell cleaning and lighting, lift maintenance, garagecleaning and maintenance etc. There are numerous factors whichdetermine the cost of community fees including:* The number of apartments that share a block. * The more thereare, the more there are to share the cost * The position. Thehigher you go the more you pay and you may also be charged morefor enjoying a view! * The total number of properties in anurbanisation. The size of a development (total area)In some rather unfair cases where a development consists of manyphases, owners of completed phases may be expected totemporarily subsidise the community fees of the uncompletedphases. This is because the green areas, the pools etc which areintended for the entire use of the development still need to bemaintained. We heard of a case in Marbella, where the owners ofthe completed phase are paying one thousand euros per monthcommunity charges. The construction of the other phases hasn'tyet started so it is likely that they will continue to pay thisfor the next few years! Seems very unfair really.The percentage of the budget that each property pays is set inthe Title Deeds (escritura) as this is determined by thedeveloper. The Community fees are normally paid quarterly orhalf-yearly depending on the Community. Expenses vary accordingto services required and include salaries ...

... and social securityfor those employed by the community (gardeners, pool attendants,hall porters etc), repairs, electricity for the lighting ofcommon areas, administration fees.Every owner must pay their community fees on the date set by themembers at the Annual General Meeting. If any of the membersfail to pay the community fees, the President or theAdministrator may claim the debt, previous authorisation of thecommunity members, in the Court of First Instance from the citywhere the block of flats is located, and even have the propertysold at auction to recover unpaid charges.The Town Hall will also make a charge for the Rubbish collection(Basura) from your property or development. This can be chargedannually or quarterly depending on the Municipality in which youare purchasing the property. In certain cases, this may beincluded in your community fees.In certain municipalities, there is an annual charge for theRecycling Tax (Tratamiento de Residuos). This covers therecycling of waste from the numerous glass, paper, and batterybanks that are distributed throughout the area. Again in somecases, this may be included within the Community fee.Most properties have electricity and water meters and you willbe charged according to the amount of each consumed. Somecommunities will only have one meter for the whole developmentand therefore include the water in the Community Fees.So before you purchase your off-plan property it may be an ideato enquire about the expected community fees. Most people don'tget to know about this until it's too late....don't get caughtout, you've no excuses now!