philat98

About 3 years ago a flat in my condominium was sold at auction because the occupant could no longer pay the bank loan. For 4 years before that he had not paid the fees of the condominium and he had run up a debt of Euro3000.
The debt has remained unpaid for 3 years. Now the new occupant is saying the debt is nothing to do with him and must be shared by all the members of the block.
Does anybody know what the law says about this situation? The condo is managed by an agency.

37100

I believe that the new owner is responsible for the year he bought and the previous year. The 'year' being the buildings account year, not necessarily Jan - Dec.

philat98

Thats interesting. Thanks.

modicasa

The new owner is liable for the year he bought the house so whether he buys in Jan or Dec it matters little, and the preceding year. For debts that are now 7 years old - the condominium will have to chase the original owner via an injunction.

philat98

Thanks Modicasa. Do you know the law involved for the injunction?

modicasa

Try this https://www.studiocataldi.it/condomi...-condomino.asp, but there may be prescrizione for older debts.... Its not something Ive ever encountered.

Capo Boi

A similar thing happened in our condominium. Essentialy the property owner died and no payments were ever made by his inheritors. A sum of almost €21,000 was racked up. (I know!!) When the property was eventually sold after maybe six years, (and at 46% less than the initial marketed price!!) the outstanding sum was withheld by the notary to settle the debt. This seemed to me quite a usual transaction and was readily accepted without any issues being raised by other condominium members (44).

So, if my experience is anything to go by, I don’t really see how you should be charged for someone else’s debt. At the least I would think that you should have a good case against your condominium administrator.

CB.

philat98

Thats what I thought. If the other occupants think they can stop paying and somebody else will pay they will all be doing it.
Our condo has water leaking into underground garages. The cost of repairs is estimated to be 100k. Probably the administrator should have insured against failure of the common structure.
Some of the neighbours are unemployed so they are never going to pay for repairs.

scrubbedexpat142

Butting in from Hungary!

Practice here is for the block management to register a charge against the apartment with the land registry. This the debt shows up on any search carried out by a prospective buyer. Thus happened when we bought this apartment last year. So we gave the sellers a simple choice, either pay it off and clear the charge or we would pay it and knock it off the agreed purchase price. In the end they paid it. In your case, presumably the bank was the seller?

philat98

Yes the bank sold the flat. The new owner is an unemployed Romanian woman so I dont expect much from her.

scrubbedexpat142

So I would have thought the liability should be on the bank, liable to sell the flat "clean". No chance, needless to say!

campos

I had a similar situation.
Occupant next door defaulted on mortgage and scarpered. The rest of the occupants were given the option of absorbing her condo fees or trying to recover through a lawyer. We opted to absorb costs, partly because engaging a lawyer would likely be more costly, and indefinite time scale attached. Meanwhile her son has been renting out the flat to various transients, still not making any contribution to condo fees. The flat is in process of being repossessed by the bank. When I sold the place the new owner was made aware of the situation and went ahead anyway.

philat98

Lawyers fees in Italy are truly terrible. We bought a small piece of abandoned woodland and the fee was almost the same as the cost of the land.