Did you think that you are not part of a Community?

Well, do check your Title Deeds. Many people have bought what they thought were independent villas, without the constraints of an Owners Community, only to realize years later, when they tried to legalise the swimming pool they had built, or their extension, that their property was part of a Community… and that in order to legalise their newly refurbished property (a requirement that nowadays is compulsory, especially if the plan is to sell the property)and that they need their consent, and that the Community’s President and Administrator are present at the Notary’s for the signing of the new deeds…

Many house owners are faced with this problem. They need to legalise the refurbishments in order to sell their property, but they cannot do it because they need the consent and the presence of a President and an Administrator of a Community that has never been created…

So what can be done to solve this? Apart from creating an Owners Community from scratch, a process that will take a lot of time and headaches…

Luckily, this situation tends to happen with small Residentials that have not got many owners, which makes things a little bit easier…

At ABC Solicitors we have successfully solved this problem for many clients that were in this situation. We take care of everything. We contact all the owners and gather all necessary documentation on their behalf, and organise whatever procedure is best depending on the community’s specific circumstances. We also accompany you to the Notary’s office and make sure that you end up with the documentation that you will need to legalise whatever works or refurbishments you have had done to your home. The cost of the procedure is shared between all the owners, so for very little money you can have the peace of mind of knowing that you can sell or carry on living on your property without the stress of looming fines or future legal problems.

Do contact us if you think you might be in this situation. We have offices in Torrevieja and in Orihuela Costa, and we can look at your specific situation and offer you a solution that suits you and your neighbours.

Do you read the small letter when signing a document?

We all know that we should carefully read everything that we are about to sign to make sure that we are 100% aware of what it is we are committing to. However, how many times we have heard the words “This is just standard wording, etc…no need to read it, please sign on the dotted line…”?

Nobody likes to seem suspicious when we are at a bank opening a bank account, or taking up a savings or pension plan, for example…it makes us feel vulnerable and silly, so we tend to throw caution to the wind and sign the documents, hoping that in fact it is all standard wording and that what the nice person at the bank is telling us about the services we are purchasing is, in fact, what it says on the contract…Worse still is when the documentation is all in Spanish and we get a quick two minutes verbal translation of what is written on it.

We have had several cases in which clients have come to our offices after realising that what they had signed up for was not in fact what they thought they were getting. Clients that invested large amounts of money thinking that on maturity of the policy they would get a nice return, only to realise that, in fact, the return they were counting on did not materialize and the capital invested had all but disappeared… Or clients that thought they were opening a short term high interest savings account to find out some time later that in fact their money was tied up in bonds that could not be accessed or liquidized for a few more years…Add to this what has been going on with banks in Spain lately, with all the fusions and takeovers, and you can see why it is so important not to enter into any formal agreement until you have read and understood absolutely everything concerning the transaction.

Next time you find yourself in a similar situation, get copies of everything the bank gives you, thank the teller profusely and tell them that you will be back, a couple of days later, once your legal advisers  have had a chance to examine the deal and have explained to you all the terms and conditions involved.

It is your money; make sure that you retain control of it…

Aldea Asesores, S.L. bankruptcy

Aldea Asesores collapsed at the end of 2009. Thousands of their customers believed that they were paying for many years the non-resident taxes on their behalf, but that was not true, as we could realised when our law firm, Advisers Bureau Consulting S.L., took over Aldea’s data base in July 2010. A huge amount of money was kept by Aldea Asesores S.L. not paying the Tax Office on their customers’ behalf. In addition to that, a lot of bank guarantees for properties never built by Huma or other builders were paid into Aldea Asesores’ bank account in La Caixa (all of them received presenting the Power of Attorney that customers have given to them in confidence); also so many 3% retention tax refunds of people that have sold their property were deposited into the same account held by Aldea Asesores, etc. Many of those customers ignored those facts until we became their fiscal representatives in Spain, but it was too late as the addition period to the Debtor List finished quite early.  However, the Spanish Law allows claiming those amounts to Aldea Asesores, S.L., that recently got an agreement with their debtors as they were declared having enough assets and properties to cover the amounts for the Debtors List, in which many clients are not included. That Debtors List is closed, but if you are one of the affected customers by the fraud of Aldea, we can help you. You just need to send to us an email and we will be glad of answering to your questions and studying your case.