Community charges..... non-payers....direct action?

Thanks Maria

Roberto

Good point re 9 houses and over 10% lost, guess we are making up the shortfall.

Can't see what the gardeners do for there money but thats another story, looking at Justins survey and talking to others we are paying far to much.

Sorry, I know its off topic but what salary would a good community gardner get.

Steve

What's a good community gardener?

I would think €10 / hour should be enough, but I don't really know. If full time, maybe €1200 per month? I'm guessing.

Hi,

We pay  €14 per hour and we supply all the equipment.

Full time for 6 months a year then part time the rest.

28SAC

Ahh......but everything's expensive on Mallorca, isn't it? Afer all, the gardener probably commutes from Barcelona every day, right?!

On a serious note.....if you provide the equipment, you have to remember to consider maintenance and repair costs. (plus who will actually take care of these things and whether workers will be responsible and careful with equipment that isn't theirs).  Also, consider whether the community insurance covers workers, or if they are self employed, check they are insured etc. Stuff for your administrator to advise on.

Hi,

We were offered €25 per hour with the tools and equipment but decided against it.

Its the general going rate for a garden company with registered workers and insurances in Mallorca.

28SAC

Maybe I should buy a lawnmower and move back there!

I think we currently pay about €300 incl IVA (vat) per month for a registered, insured company with own equipment, to maintain the garden and pool (incl all chemicals). During the winter they come once or twice a week, probably only total a couple of hours. During summer, three times a week, a couple of hours max. each time. I suppose it probably doesn't work out that much cheaper on an hourly rate really.

Oh, and they're rubbish, but better than the last two who we sacked!

Be ready to fall over,

Our chemicals alone are over €1000 a month, ( i pass the bill )

Our community pool is 50m x 7m and 1.8 deep so quite big but very expensive to maintain and having about 30% German owners who insist on it being spotless through the winter hense the costs.

It is kept to a high standard.

28SAC

Hi

This is why I went off topic and asked the question, It would appear that we have two self employed gardeners, all year round. Say they get only 1ke ea per month thats 24ke divided by 9 before we start on anything else, ie pool.

When we completed on the house in February, and was there for 10 days, I only caught sight of them once.

Seriously considering putting a bid in myself, after saying that the community does look well maintained.

Steve

Just to let you all know that I am flying into Malaga tomorrow morning and will be staying in near Mijas until sunday lunch.

If anybody is nearby and wants to meet about the recovery of Community Fees let me know and we can see if we can arrange something.

Kind regards

I was wondering if anyone did get in touch with Solutions, and if so, what was the outcome? I'm sure I'm not the only one here who is interested to know about this possibilty of recovering community debts through the UK courts?

Question for Solutions, if he hasn't given up hope with us lot:

A while back on this thread, I asked "are you talking about British property owners in Spain specifically, or can you recover debts from anyone?" to which you replied "It can be done for anybody in the EU (bar Denmark for some reason)".

I noticed on another forum tonight that you have posted on, someone asked a similar question, questioning how you can do this if you are not qualified as a lawyer in Spain, to which you replied "Not qualified to practice in Spain as I don't need to be. I can do it through the UK courts (except for Spanish residents)." (my italics)

Can you just clarify then - you are talking about pursuing British owners of Spanish property, who are resident in the UK? I think it's important to make this clear, since I'm quite sure that a large number of community debtors (in Spain) are actually residents (in Spain). The owner I mentioned previously, for example (who owes €5000) is Spanish and lives in Spain.

Hi Roberto,

I never give up hope!

I have ten cases arriving on monday so I will let you know how they go.

It is me not making myself clear, Sorry. The cases I can help with are cross border EU claims. Anyone who is resident in Spain with a Spanish debt has to be pursued through the Spanish courts. Anyone resident in another EU country with a Spanish debt(except Denmark - they opted out), can be pursued through their home court. It involves country of domicile.

I appreciate people are sceptical about this and also about me. Once I have started these ten cases I will provide an honest assessment of the system. The President who has instructed me will also provide feedback. Sometimes it just takes a little faith.

Speak soon.

We are awaiting further news with bated breath................................

Thanks for clarifying that, much clearer now. Actually seems to make perfect sense, since non residents are more likely to have other assets and/or income in their country of domicile.

Too bad the 5k debtor I know of is resident here. Anyway, we only have one non-Spanish resident owner in our community - and they are fully paid up, like everyone else too. Happy days!

Look forward to hearing how you get on with the test cases. Good luck.

i put this question out on this w/site quite some time ago, but got no response or an answer, so i'll ask again. has anyone heard of ,or know of ,any owner having their property embargoed or taken from them by the court's for not paying community fee's to be sold off and the procede's going back to that particular community, if so, when the court case goes ahead, what is the time scale from start to finish ?  regard's bluefox. 

I'm sure I answered you before.....................we have one owner with an embargo and it has taken nearly 3 years to get this far. We are now awaiting the courts to sell the property. We have another owner in exactly the same position with arrears and exactly the same timescale BUT this was heard by a different judge ( although the owner has never been present ) and the judge is giving more time for the money to be paid.

No logic.........but hey, this is SPAIN.

don't think you did k/sun and if you did i missed it but no matter, thank's for that, not your fault but what you said has really made my day, don't know about the one's you refer to but it seem's to me the one's in our c/plex know exactly what they are doing, they don't give a damn and simply taking the p......! out the honest rest of us (3 u.k. "owner's" 2 resident) i guess as you know, and i know it's been said before on here, the rediculous spanish law tell's us we can't turn anything off ie. water elec. etc..and nothing to stop them from renting them out..... the mind boggle's...........3 YEAR'S.....OUCH !     it's certainly ......SPAIN !  would they get away with it in u.k./ire i wonder, or would they even consider it ?  even more mind boggling ! it's enough to make you want to blow a fuse....or better still...........PULL ONE ! 

p.s. e.o.s........where is all the "squiggly" bit's come from ?

Hi,

New to this post so not sure if anyone can help.  We have a number of Debtors who have put their contact details as their aprtment in Spain but do not live there.  So making contact with them is impossible and they owe considerable amounts of their community charge.  Does anyone know if deeds can be viewed/accessed for their property anywhere to see if they have UK contact addresses?

Thanks

Does not the admnistrato have their addresses in the Uk?

The developer needs to have same deeds and there you could find a different address.

Anyhow, and under a procedural point of view, you do not need to look for an address in the Uk but to post the claim in the news board of the community of owners in order to proceed ahead with the claim.

Maria,

Thank you very much for the reply.

Unfortunately the Administrators do not have all the owners details, (I know this is not their doing), but the previous Administrators who left the records in a mess.  However, is it legal to do either or both of the following:

• Demand the details provided by the purchasers of each property from the developer/builders?
• Pursue legal claims against debtors in their absence, even knowing we can not make contact with them as we do not have the details?

You mentioned as long as we post our intentions to the community in a news board, (presumably a forum is OK), and that is enough to proceed?  I assume this would be a 'general notice' as against 'naming individuals' as we could be pursued for slander? 

If the owner claims they are not registered on the forum, have never received notification by way of email, letter etc, (even though we do not have current contact details), this is still OK?

I am just trying to prevent the situation continuing longer and longer by the debtors coming back with objections which are valid, in other words playingthe game to stretch out any action we want to take.