Legal Help

• Can an OFF PLAN  property be charged a community fee for any period prior to the issue of the Habitation Certificate and the Signing of the Title Deed.
• Does the developer legally have to declare any fees or encumbrances against the property in front of the Notary and prior to the signing of the Title Deed. This refers to an Off Plan Property.
• Is there a professional body in Spain that can be contacted with regard to negligence by a Solicitor which would be able obtain reimbursement of any costs incurred by the client due to the negligence of the Solicitor.

I dont know whether you have had any answers to your questions yet. As for the question about a profesional body for solicitors this is called "Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Murcia" in case it is a solicitor from Murcia. Their website is www.icamur.org. Yes. sometimes it is a good idea to make some oficial complaint about the ones that charge easy but high fees and just do not comply with what they are supposed to do which is protecting your interest! This would also help the good ones that are out there.

Community fees are only charged from the date on which you complete and as legally you cannot be forced to complete on a property where there is no Certificate of Habitation in place the again the community fees would not be liable for payment

The community charges are actually based on the date that you completed so if, as some people did on Mar Menor 2, you chose, because of the financial situation with Polaris, to complete before the COH was issued the you are liable to community  fees form the date that you legally completed

The developer does have to declare any charges, mortgages etc on the property, at completion at The Notary and discharge these prior to completion, not just verbally but in writing as part of the process and your lawyer should also be checking this

If a property is complete, the COH issued and you have been notified of a completion date and you refuse to complete any claim made by a developer will include a claim for back dated community fees

Rememember that before charges are agreed and issued ther is normally the first meeting of the communidad and the appointment of the Administor who should actfor the owners to deal with these type of queries and agian I know that these meetings have happened at MM2

I hope that this information helps

As far as I understand it and we have just been through this ourselves, the habitation licence is issued by the local council and a committee usually a president ,vice president and administrator is appointed and it is these who set the community charge which is to cover the expenses of looking after the development after it is finally handed over by the builders and everyone is happy with their properties etc. There as been no mention of the community charge being applied as from the date that we signed for the property as this was nearly two years ago and we have been living there all the while.

We completed on Mar Menor in Nov 2009. We have been charged community charges since the completion date and have met with the onsite administrators( Mare Nostrum,) many times...... We get a full set of accounts and know exactly what we are paying.

If individuals have fully completed even though they are not totally satisfied with communial parts you should be liable for community charges anyway.The banks who own the unsold ones still pay their community charges otherwise it would be down to the 400 people who do own to cover all the community charges for all 1200 flats.......

We argued many times about the lack   of communial lighting around our block and the lack more importantly of a saftey rail, as a result we threatened not to pay full community charges and we were told tough luck., we would be liable for the full monthly allocated community charge which is based on size and location of the property.

I would think that anyone not paying community charges once they had completed should be careful that they are not handed a huge back dated invoice. We were from November 2009 till February 2010 when we actually moved in.