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OK LETS SEE WHO HAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE COMMUNITY FEES ON THIS SITE. SHOULD BE INTERESTING AS I THINK MINE ARE HIGH
I PAY 2,410 .00 EUROS PER YEAR FOR A 2 BED APARTMENT, IT IS EVEN MORE FOR THE 3 BEDS AND THE PENTHOUSES.
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The highest com fees I came across was 450 euros per month for a beachside townhouse in Costalita (Estepona)
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Gosh Pads, What do you get for such a HUGE amount of money?
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We get a president that breaks the rules that she sets. see 'community president gone crazy' . Oh and we own a three bedroom apartment so we pay more!!!!!!!!!! 
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Debwal, "we pay more" - more than what? Do you mean, more than PADS? (Are you on the same community?)
Justin, has there been open resistance to increasing the fees, then?
We pay nearly €100 per month for a 2 bed, but because there are so few of us (12) contributing towards a pool and garden and lift, there's still not enough for any "extras". The annual budget is usually simply based on the previous year's expenditure, so there's never any surplus building up in order to carry out improvements, or maintenance jobs that will inevitably crop up. For example, we will need to paint the building soon, which will necessitate a substantial extraordinary payment by everyone.
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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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I pay 162 euros a month for a 3 bed, 3 bath Duplex Penthouse, we have 7 swimming pools and extensive gardens + 24 hour security, guess we get a good deal.. oh and mine has gone up only 11 euros in total per month in 3 1/2 years :-)
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Yeah Rob, massive resistance to increasing the fees. Many think they are already paying way too much (they are living in a dream land).
We need some more money for "extras" too but it's just not there. Susan wants me to step down this year as president as it's a losing battle but then I don't want someone doing a worse job than me and running this place into the ground on such a tiny budget!
Justin
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Hi Justin
Im just glad they get things sorted out, well 95% anyway, my management companies in UK just take our money and do nothing with it, then ask for more and put up fee's...
Our comminity leader is even trying to cut out the middle man and do a straight deal with the cleaners and gardeners and other services to save £10k per month..
Im watching the news in bournemouth and Uk house prices and dropped again :-( -
Cheers
Rob
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Ours are 315 euros a month for which we get 24 hours security large outdoor pool, kids pool, indoor heated pool, sauna, gym, fairly large gardens, lifts, and underground parking. We have just had a new president (Spanish) appointed who has sacked the present administrators and employed a new one with the view to reducing costs. We will just have to see f the services are reduced a well!
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Justin, I know exactly how you feel. If you've been following my other posts, you'll know I quit as president a couple of weeks ago, but as Ian (Promedia) predicted, I'm beginning to wonder whether it was the right thing to do. I just want to pay my dues and mind my own business, but at the same time, I don't want some incompetent idiot ruining all the hard work I put in getting things running (reasonably) smoothly. It's a tough call. Do you have a good vice president, who you can gradually hand over to?
Wow, some people do pay a lot - but it does sound like they get quite a lot in return. But I wonder how many people realise, at the time they are forking out a premium for a home in a luxury complex, that it's not just a higher price they are paying initially to get to enjoy the benefits of all those goodies, but that there will also be an on-going cost in the form of community fees?
Obviously, if you own your own villa, and need people to look after your garden & pool etc., it's going to cost you. But, I think one of the problems that communities face, is that contractors inevitably charge more than they would private property owners, and are usually unsupervised and unobserved in their work, and can get away with the bare minimum of work for an inflated price; whereas when they work for private owners, they are more likely to be checked on.
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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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Roberto
i agree with you on the community fees thing. I don't think many people realise the ongoing costs of owning a home in the sun. It was hardly mentioned by our agents, and when it was, it was just glossed over with comments like '' well it's all shared equally between everyone, so it wont cost you much''. No mention of any possible complications! Much more info' about now than in 2002 thankfully, if people are prepared to look for it.
I think a good lawyer could be a big help in sorting out community fee details, but needs to thrashed out before contracts signed i feel, with substantial deposits enforced, to hopefully secure a fairer system for all.
This message was last edited by goodstich44 on 5/3/2008.
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Hi Guys
I think everyone is to excited to ask about fee's when buying offplan, also sales people will never know what those fee's will be anyway...
As i said in my post, Spanish fee's compare costly to the ones in England for apartments but you get a lot more for your money in Spain..
Saying all that i wish it was all free :-)
Rob
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Hi robmct yes you are right when buying offplan nobody seems to be able to give any indication of what the community fees will be. When attending the Notarys to finalise our property, we were asked to pay 50 euros cash towards the community fees, but they still could not say how much they would finally be. It was only 3 months after we completed that we got a bill for the fees. This turned out to 64 euros a month which we thought was reasonable. For this we have well kept gardens and pool and all the building cleaning and maintainance taken care of. We dont have gyms, fitness centres or indoor heated pools. But living in town we have all these type of facilities within walking distance and they are cheap to use. Our fees actually went up this year by 4 euros a month, but whose complaining lol. I think that some of these other comunities are overpriced for the services you actually get.
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Until a community is begun who knows what costs are involved ? It depends on what you all want. For instance a gardener will need to be hired if you put trees around the communal pool & have lawns as we have. You'll need these watering on a system too & water isn't free. Some friends on another community just opted for the cheapest way, no lawns, no trees. Granted, they had to pay to have imitation lawn or concrete in the first place but, after the initial outlay, there's nothing to pay as no gardener needed. I know our community pay a lot to the gardeners. Your community may opt for gates at ends of roads for better security plus raising the walls around the perimeter, others won't.
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morerosado
as everyone knows there will be a community charge of some sort, at least if everyone paid say a 100e a month from the start, a decent fund would build up, and everyone would be contributing. Anything left at the end of each year could go towards larger maintence costs or a good community party!!
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The garden and it's maintenance is a particular bugbear of mine. Most new communities probably won't get a say on it, since the developer / builder probably has already decided whether it will be paved or planted, but since our garden was pretty much left as a dumping ground for leftover construction materials at the time we moved in, apart from fighting to get the developer to have it finished properly, we also had the opportunity to decide how we would like it finished.
I like lush tropical paradises as much as the next primate, but nevertheless I could see the long term benefit of having the majority of the garden area paved - Andalucia "does" patios rather well, after all. As expected (by me at least) the only part which actually gets used for sitting / lying in, is the immediate perimeter of the pool; the rest is just for show. A nice patio, with some border shrubs, would have done nicely. But the majority voted for "green" zones. Hence we have a large, unused lawn, which needs regularly cutting, and consumes vast quantities of precious water. (It's also home to huge colonies of ants). We forked out a large amount on an automatic irrigation system, and I recently calculated that about one third of our fees go towards the gardener's fees and the water bill! (Admittedly the gardener also maintains the pool, so we would still have a bill for that, but it would be subtantially less).
robmct, I really wouldn't know how fees in Spain compare to the UK, but you would have to compare apples with apples, obviously. I can't remember the exact amount, but I was quite shocked recently when I enquired about the maintenance charge on a swanky new flat in Liverpool's redeveloped docklands. And all they had to show for it was marble halls and a concierge.
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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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I can give rough ballpark figures for our community expenses some of which seem excessive to me.
Maintenance Pool etc. Eur 45000, Fire extinguisher 1000, Gardening 45000, Cleaning 40000, Lifts(12) 32000, Administration 23000, Security 85000, Lifeguards 7000, Insurance 8500, Water 54000, Electricity 32000, Pool Maintenance 7000, Pest Control 1500 There are some other ones but these are the main ones.
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Goodstich, when we were shown Polaris World properties by our Parador rep at Torre Pachecho (even though we asked for Benijofar to Guardamar areas & Torre Pachecho was m i l e s away), we thought to enquire of the PW staff member who was telling us all about the community that was going to happen eventually (we were in the offices, looking at the models with him) how much the community fee was likely to be. He said in the 1st yr it was estimated at 1,000€ !! We thought WOW, that's a lot, surely ? After all we're on the CB not the CDS where we'd expect to pay more generally. He said it was because Polaris were only going to allow owners to play golf on their golf courses which, from what I've read on forums, isn't what's happening anyway. Also they were having gated communities & security guards.
Ours currently are 450€ annually, paid annually so we have money to spend. We're 54 detached homes with one communal pool & three private roads with lights in our walls. (Not enough light I might add for my idea of security).
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morerosado
i think if regulation was enforced that said agents must submit roughly what the community costs will be (and there is enough info now for agents to be able to estimate) in their sales bumf, and payment was compulsory from the completion date, people would know where they stand before committing themselves, and the development would quickly build up a fund, contributed by all.
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