has anyone had an experience of community of property owners commitees

The question covers a multitude of sins, specific ones would maybe better.
This may help HERE , from the Free Beer thread.

thanks for that J D R but what I was really looking for was peoples personal experiences good or bad

Good or bad is up to the president and the support he gets at the AGM`s, same as all commitees.

o
obviously you have had experiences of this so,I own an house on an urbanicion
do we have to form a CPO

Yes you do, have a read through the link I gave you, it tells you all about the officers, administrators you need to hire etc, but you will need advice from a lawyer on how to legally set it up, it is too risky to do without proper knowledge of the legal procedures.

Dear Chippie
There is no legal obligation to form a CPO when living on an Urb. The law was changed so that people on Urbs could form a CPO if they so wished.
It really depends if you have a lot of communal "property" as to whether it is a good idea or not.
Thank you for starting this thread as it is quite an issue on our urbanisation at the moment and there are a lot of conflicting views on the subject.
Maureen

So how do you work out who pays what for the upkeep of the gardens, pools, lighting, PL insurance, building insurance, repairs, painting, etc ?

they cause blue murder,say if its your turn to be president you get the flack.and the worst of it if some nut has a bad Idia and it gets passed at the meeting by majority vote then it stands,eg lets get this done it looks nice,1000 each lets get this done 800 each lets have this 500 each.I have had this happen.

yes and no.if it has comunial areas like pools ect then yes and you all pay a share of the upkeep it may be just the pool thats communial.or it may be your gardens and pool. lights.irigation. comunial property maintanance ect so you each pay acordingly. that is a comunity.if its just a straight urba with no comunial up keep or areas then if you want you can form a CPO but that is like your local comunity centre back home.say for instance they may want ten euro off who ever wants to partisipate because they are having eg a street party or a day trip to zoo marine for the people or kids from the urba

At the moment we have not been adopted by the council. We have no communal areas. Each manzana is voting as to whether to have a CPO and president. There are only 30 houses on our manzana and we have nothing communal at all. It may be that at some point in the future we decide to have a CPO but at present we are waiting to see what happens.

If you read David Searl on this you will see that there are two distinct types of community. The first where there is communal property such as stairwells, private roads, pools and gardens. These are almost always part of a community set up by the developer and the second where there is a collection of detached houses with no communal facilities but where the householders would wish the council to "adopt" the roads, street lighting, verges and drains etc. In this case it seems that the householders come together to form a community and this is in partnership with the council who arranges the required maintenance.

I have read that this second type has problems since a smaller community charge is levid but the householders already pay council tax to the Ayuntamiento. I think it was Bruce Forsyth or Simon Cowell were in dispute with the council in Marbella claiming that they were paying twice for the same service

The roads surrounding your houses are communal, what is going to happen if a few bulbs go in the lighting, a drain blocks, do you not have any parking areas, gardens or trees that need looking after, a fund for road repairs for later ?
Things don`t last indefinitely.
Usually you have a main urbanization commitee then smaller commitees for each housing block, if yours are all villas then you will still need a main commitee.

The second charge does not double up the council charges, it just covers things like insurances, gardens, pools etc that are within the walls of the community grounds and is really a must do situation.
Imagine the consequences if one of the members never insured their townhouse or whatever and burned half the block down.

but you may be part of a big comunity with acces to comunity areas.so you will still have to pay and possibly need a cpo as each group of houses may be clased as a comunity I dont know.