Comunidad de propietarios: what foreign owners in Spain get wrong

Almost every foreign buyer of a Spanish flat meets the comunidad de propietarios in the same way: as a line item. A monthly figure the agent quoted, somewhere between forty and four hundred euros, sitting quietly next to the IBI and the insurance. It looks like the American homeowners association or the British service charge, so buyers treat it the way they treated those — a bill to set up on standing order and forget.

The bill is the smallest part. Spanish horizontal property law creates something more consequential than a billing entity. The moment you sign the deed on a flat in a divided building, you become a member of a body with a statutory constitution, an annual assembly, defined majorities, the power to approve expenditure that binds you, its own fast-track court procedure to collect from you, and a legal right to serve you notice at an address you may never check.

None of that is unfair. It is how shared buildings are governed everywhere. The problem is specific to owners who live abroad, and it is a problem of timing and attention rather than of law: the Spanish system was written on the assumption that the owner is reachable in Spain and reads their post. If you are still in Ohio waiting on a non-lucrative visa, or you spend four months a year in the flat and eight somewhere else, several rules that are perfectly reasonable in the abstract start to work against you by default.

This page explains the machinery for foreign and non-resident owners: how you became a member, how decisions get made, what happens when you are not there, what a derrama is and why it can be far larger than your annual fee, which debts follow the flat rather than the seller, and how all of this touches a residence file.

“Clients ask me what the community fee is. The more useful question is what the community has already decided, what it is about to decide, and where it will send the letter. A fee you can budget. A decision taken while nobody could reach you is the one that costs money.”

The short answer

A Spanish comunidad de propietarios is the governing body of a building divided into separately owned units. It is regulated by the Horizontal Property Act, Ley 49/1960 de Propiedad Horizontal, usually shortened to LPH. Membership is automatic and inseparable from ownership: you cannot resign, opt out or sell your unit while keeping out of the community.

Its decisions are taken at the junta de propietarios, the owners' meeting, which must be held at least once a year to approve the accounts and the budget. Different decisions require different majorities, from a simple majority up to unanimity, and each unit carries a cuota de participación, a participation quota expressed as a percentage, which determines both what you pay and how much your vote weighs.

Three rules matter disproportionately to owners who live abroad. First, under article 17.8 LPH an owner absent from the meeting who is properly notified of the decision and does not object within thirty days is counted in favour of it. Second, under article 9.1.h LPH, if you have not given the secretary an address in Spain, the flat itself becomes your legal address for notices, and if delivery there fails, a notice posted on the community noticeboard takes full effect after three calendar days. Third, under article 9.1.e LPH the community's unpaid general expenses for the current year and the three preceding calendar years attach to the property, which means they follow the flat to a buyer.

Why “HOA” is a bad translation

The comparison is not wrong so much as misleading in four specific ways.

It is statutory, not contractual. A US homeowners association is typically a corporation created by a developer, governed by recorded covenants you accepted when you bought. A Spanish community exists because the building is divided; the LPH supplies its constitution directly. There is no equivalent of “this development happens not to have an HOA” for a divided building.

It has no board in the American sense. Governance is the meeting itself, plus a president who must be an owner, an optional vice-president, and a secretary-administrator role that is very often outsourced to a professional property manager, the administrador de fincas. That manager is not the community. Owners sometimes spend a year arguing with the manager about a decision only the meeting can change.

Its enforcement runs to the property, not just to you. The community's claim is backed by the unit itself. This is why arrears survive a sale, within limits, and why a purchase without a debt certificate is a real risk rather than a formality.

Its default assumptions are Spanish. Notices in Spanish, meetings in Spanish, a legal address in Spain, in-person attendance, and deadlines counted from service rather than from receipt. There is no obligation on the community to translate anything or to chase you abroad.

One regional note before going further: in Catalonia, horizontal property is governed by Book Five of the Catalan Civil Code rather than by the state LPH, and several rules and majorities differ. The description below follows the LPH, which applies in most of Spain, including Andalucía, Madrid, Valencia and the islands.

You did not join it. You inherited it.

When a building is divided into units, the deed of division sets each unit's cuota de participación, its participation quota, generally by reference to surface area, situation and use of common elements. That single percentage does most of the work: it is the share of general expenses you owe under article 9.1.e LPH, and it is the weight of your vote in the majorities that require quotas as well as heads.

It also means your obligations began before you arrived. The community's statutes, its internal rules, and every decision validly taken before your purchase continue to bind you as the new owner. If the meeting resolved three years ago to replace the lift in phases, you bought into the phases that remain. If the statutes prohibit a use, that prohibition came with the keys.

This is the single most common gap we see in a purchase file. Buyers commission a structural survey and a land registry check, and read neither the community statutes nor the minutes of the last few meetings. The actas are where the future money lives: pending works, quotations already requested, disputes with a neighbour, an insurance claim, a technical building inspection report that has flagged the facade. Ask for the last three years of minutes before you commit, and read them alongside the rest of your property purchase due diligence.

The majority ladder

Spanish law does not use one majority for everything. Article 17 LPH builds a ladder, roughly from easiest to hardest, and knowing which rung a proposal sits on tells you how much your absence costs.

• One third of owners and one third of quotas. Installing shared or private renewable energy systems, telecommunications infrastructure, or the infrastructure needed to access new collective energy supplies. Notably, the community may not charge the installation, conservation and maintenance cost to owners who did not vote in favour — though later users must pay their updated share if they want to connect.
• Three fifths of owners and quotas. Establishing or removing services of common interest such as a lift, porter, concierge, surveillance or other shared amenities, including leasing common elements. Also the route used to limit or condition tourist rental activity in the building, which has its own rules and is covered separately on our page about the tourist rental licence and residence permits.
• Majority of owners and quotas. Accessibility works and lift installation under article 17.2, including where the cost exceeds twelve ordinary monthly instalments.
• Simple majority of those present. The everyday business: approving accounts and budgets, appointing officers, ordinary maintenance, and any matter the law does not reserve to a higher majority. In practice this is where most money is spent.
• Unanimity. Changing the deed of division or the statutes of the community.

Sitting outside that ladder is article 10 LPH, which lists works that are compulsory and do not require a prior agreement at all: works needed for proper upkeep and safety, works imposed by the authorities, and accessibility works requested by an owner in whose dwelling a person with a disability or over seventy lives, works or provides voluntary services, where the annual cost after any public subsidy does not exceed twelve ordinary monthly instalments. For those, there is nothing to vote against. The meeting only decides how to execute and finance them.

The absent owner: when silence counts as yes

This is the rule that surprises foreign owners most, and it is worth stating precisely.

Article 17.8 LPH provides that, for decisions requiring the qualified majorities described above, owners who were absent from the meeting and who, after being duly notified of the decision in the manner set out in article 9, do not tell the secretary of their disagreement within thirty calendar days, are counted as having voted in favour. Their quota is added to the majority.

Read that again from the point of view of someone in Chicago. A vote is taken in your building in March. It does not reach the required three fifths on the day, because half the owners are non-resident and did not attend. The minutes are notified. Nobody objects within thirty days, because most of the absent owners are absent from Spain, not merely from the room. At the end of April the decision is carried, and the absent owners built the majority by doing nothing at all.

Two limits are worth keeping in mind. The presumption does not operate where the cost of the service cannot be passed on to owners who did not expressly vote in favour — the article 17.1 renewable and telecom cases, for example, protect the dissenting or silent owner financially. And it does not fit decisions that amount to authorising a private benefit for one owner, such as an individual alteration or a private installation, where the affected owners' actual consent matters. Those limits are genuine, but they are exceptions. The general position is the one above: silence is a vote.

There is also a separate deadline in the other direction. Under article 18 LPH, an owner who wants to challenge a decision in court generally has three months from its adoption, or from notification for absent owners, extended to one year where the decision is contrary to law or to the statutes. And an owner who is not current on their community payments may not challenge at all unless they first pay or deposit the disputed sum with the court. Arrears do not just remove your vote; they can remove your standing to complain.

Where the letter actually goes

Everything above depends on notification, so this is the rule that decides whether the rest is fair to you.

Article 9.1.h LPH obliges every owner to notify the person acting as secretary of an address in Spain for the service of summonses and notices of any kind relating to the community. It is not optional and it is not a courtesy. It is a duty of ownership, sitting in the same list as the duty to contribute to expenses.

If you do not comply, the law supplies a default: the flat or premises belonging to the community is taken as your address, and notices delivered to whoever occupies it have full legal effect. For a rented flat, that means your tenant. For an empty holiday flat, that means an envelope in a letterbox you open in July.

If service at that address proves impossible, the notice is placed on the community noticeboard or another visible place of general use, with a note stating the date and the reasons for using that method, signed by the secretary with the president's approval. That notice produces full legal effect three calendar days later.

So the thirty-day objection window under article 17.8 can open, run and close entirely against a piece of paper taped up in a hallway two thousand miles from where you live. Nothing about that is a loophole; it is the statute working as designed, on the assumption that you did the one thing the statute asked you to do.

Derramas and the reserve fund

Your monthly fee covers ordinary expenses: cleaning, lift maintenance, insurance, water for common areas, the manager's fee, minor repairs. A derrama is different. It is an extraordinary contribution approved by the meeting to fund something the ordinary budget does not cover: a facade repair, a roof, a lift replacement, structural work following a technical building inspection, a legal action.

Derramas are where the real numbers live. An ordinary fee of €120 a month is background noise; a facade and balcony intervention on a 1970s coastal block, apportioned by quota, can arrive as a five-figure demand with a payment calendar attached. Older buildings on the Costa del Sol are working through accumulated deferred maintenance and structural inspection requirements, and buyers who purchased at the bottom of a building's maintenance cycle inherit the bill at the top of it.

Partial protection exists for genuine improvements. Under article 17.4 LPH, where the meeting approves a new common service or improvement that is not required for proper upkeep, an owner who dissented may be excused from contributing if the instalment exceeds three ordinary monthly payments — although they cannot then use the improvement, and if they later want to, they pay their updated share. Note the wording carefully: it covers improvements, not necessary conservation and safety works. You cannot decline to pay for a roof because you dissented.

Against all of this sits the reserve fund. Article 9.1.f LPH requires the community to maintain a reserve fund of not less than ten per cent of its last ordinary annual budget, to cover conservation, repair, rehabilitation and works to comply with accessibility requirements. When you are reviewing a building before purchase, the reserve fund balance and the last few years of minutes together tell you more about your future costs than the quoted monthly fee does.

Buying in: the debt that travels with the flat

Article 9.1.e LPH creates a real charge that foreign buyers routinely underestimate. The unit answers for the general expenses owed by its previous owners for the year of acquisition and the three preceding calendar years. Debts older than that remain a personal claim against the seller, and are rarely worth chasing across a border.

The statutory protection is the certificate. At the notarial deed the seller must declare being current on community payments and produce a certificate of the state of debts, issued by the secretary with the president's approval. The buyer may waive it. Buyers under time pressure sometimes do, on the strength of a reassurance from the seller or an agent.

Do not waive it. The certificate is one document, obtainable in days, and it is the difference between knowing your exposure and buying it. Where a debt does exist, the sensible mechanism is not to trust a promise but to retain the amount from the price and pay the community directly at completion.

The same logic applies to what else the minutes reveal. A derrama already approved before you buy is not a surprise cost; it is a known cost that the price should reflect. Whether the seller or the buyer bears an approved-but-unbilled assessment is a matter of negotiation, and it should be written into the private contract rather than assumed. If you are still deciding between buying now and renting first, our note on renting or buying before a non-lucrative visa looks at the timing question from the residence side.

If you fall behind

Community arrears escalate along a defined path, and non-resident owners fall into it more often through mis-delivered notices and closed Spanish bank accounts than through refusal to pay.

The community's tool is the special monitorio procedure in article 21 LPH: a fast-track payment claim based on a certificate of the debt approved by the meeting, issued by the secretary with the president's approval, and notified to the affected owner in the manner set out in article 9. If the debtor does not oppose, the claim proceeds to enforcement; if they oppose in writing, the matter continues as an ordinary civil case. The registered owner can be sued so that the enforcement can reach the registered property, and the community can recover its lawyer and court agent costs.

Since April 2025, following the entry into force of the reform of the public justice service, Spanish civil claims generally require the claimant to show a prior attempt at an appropriate means of dispute resolution — negotiation, mediation, conciliation or a formal demand with a settlement proposal — before the claim will be admitted. Courts have not been uniform about how this applies to the horizontal property monitorio, and the practical effect for owners is simply that a formal pre-claim demand now usually arrives before the court file does. Treat that letter as the last quiet moment, not as noise.

The collateral consequence is the one described earlier and it is worth repeating because it compounds. Article 15.2 LPH deprives owners who are not current on their payments — and who have not judicially challenged the debt or deposited the amount — of the right to vote, while allowing them to attend and speak. Their quota is deducted from the totals used to compute majorities. An unnoticed arrears balance therefore silences you precisely at the meeting where the derrama you object to is passed.

You can be made president in absentia

Article 13.2 LPH requires the community to have a president, chosen from among the owners by election or, failing that, by mandatory rotation or by lot. The office is compulsory for the person on whom it falls. There is no volunteer requirement and no exemption for owners who live abroad or do not speak Spanish.

The remedy is judicial, not automatic: an owner designated president may apply to the court within one month of appointment to be relieved, setting out the reasons. The court decides. In practice, distance, language and non-residence are often accepted as good reasons, but you must actually make the application within the month — and you cannot make it if you did not learn of your appointment, which brings the whole question back to article 9.1.h and where your post is being sent.

Why this matters to a residence file

This looks like property law rather than immigration law, and formally it is. But four connections run directly into a residence application or renewal.

The budget. Non-lucrative applicants prove passive income against a statutory multiple of the IPREM. That test measures income, not costs. Community fees and derramas do not help you meet it and they do erode the margin you actually live on. A renewal that asks whether your means remain sufficient is a poor moment to be paying for a roof. Our page on property income and the non-lucrative visa covers the income side in detail.

The accommodation evidence. A title deed shows ownership. What supports a residence file is a property that is genuinely available and habitable. A flat in the middle of a possession dispute, or in a building where works have made a unit unusable, is weaker evidence than a clean long-term lease. That is also the connection to our note on squatters and foreign-owned homes, where the community records often turn out to be the best contemporaneous proof of how a property was actually used.

What you may lawfully do in the building. A non-lucrative permit does not authorise work in Spain, and the community's decisions interact with that: what you may rent, on what terms, and whether the building has voted to restrict short-term letting. Those two constraints are separate and both must be satisfied, which is the subject of our page on managing a rental property on a non-lucrative visa.

Absence. The profile most exposed to the article 9.1.h default — the owner who bought first and will move later, or who spends part of the year elsewhere — is exactly the profile of a person waiting on a visa. The gap between buying and residing is the window in which community decisions accumulate unread.

Spanish community vs US-style HOA

Question	Typical US HOA	Spanish comunidad de propietarios
Source of authority	Recorded covenants and corporate bylaws	The Horizontal Property Act itself, plus the deed of division and statutes
Who decides	Elected board, with member votes on limited matters	The owners' meeting; the president is an owner, the manager is a service provider
Weight of your vote	Often one unit, one vote	Heads and participation quotas, depending on the majority required
Effect of not attending	Usually no vote recorded	For qualified majorities, silence for thirty days after notice counts as a yes
Where notices are sent	Address on file, often abroad	An address in Spain you must designate; failing that, the flat, then the noticeboard
Extraordinary costs	Special assessment	Derrama, plus a compulsory reserve fund of at least 10% of the ordinary budget
Prior owner's debts	Varies widely by state and lien practice	Attach to the unit for the current year and three preceding calendar years
Collection route	Lien, then foreclosure in some states	Special monitorio claim, with the unit standing behind the debt
Effect of arrears on you	Often loss of amenities or voting by bylaw	Statutory loss of the vote, and loss of standing to challenge decisions

What to set up before you leave

Nothing in this page requires a dispute to become expensive. It requires a handful of arrangements that take an afternoon and are almost never made.

• Designate a Spanish address for notices in writing, to the administrador de fincas, and keep the acknowledgement. This single step disarms most of what is described above.
• Ask to be added to the community's email distribution for convocatorias and minutes. It has no statutory effect on deadlines, but it means you find out in time to act.
• Give a standing written proxy to someone who attends — a neighbour, your lawyer, your property manager. Representation at the meeting requires an authorisation signed by you; a specific proxy for each convocatoria is cleaner and harder to dispute.
• Set up a direct debit from a Spanish account and check it survives. Failed direct debits after a card change or a bank's non-resident review are a common origin of accidental arrears.
• Read the minutes each year, not just the invoice. Approved works appear in the minutes long before they appear in your bank statement.
• Before buying, obtain the debt certificate, the statutes and three years of minutes, and price what they contain. See our note on buying property and the non-lucrative visa for how this fits the wider purchase and residence sequence, and our guide to unlicensed works and first occupation where the community file shows terrace enclosures, facade changes or use changes that also need planning checks.

The underlying point is simple. Spanish horizontal property law is not hostile to foreign owners. It is indifferent to where they live, and it fills the gap left by an absent owner with defaults that favour the building's ability to function. Those defaults are only a problem for people who never told the community how to reach them.

Sources reviewed August 2026: Ley 49/1960, de 21 de julio, sobre propiedad horizontal, consolidated text, in particular article 3 on participation quotas, article 9.1.e on contribution to general expenses and the charge attaching to the property for the current year and three preceding calendar years together with the debt certificate at the deed, article 9.1.f on the reserve fund of not less than ten per cent of the last ordinary budget, article 9.1.h on the obligation to designate an address in Spain and on service at the dwelling and by noticeboard with effect after three calendar days, article 10 on compulsory works including accessibility works within the twelve-monthly-instalment limit, article 13 on the compulsory office of president and judicial relief within one month, article 15 on representation by written authorisation and on deprivation of the vote for owners in arrears, article 16 on the annual ordinary meeting and convocation, article 17 on majorities including one third for renewable energy and telecommunications infrastructure, three fifths for services of common interest, the article 17.4 exemption for improvements exceeding three monthly instalments, the article 17.8 presumption of a favourable vote by absent owners after thirty days and its exceptions, article 18 on challenging decisions and the requirement to be current on payments, and article 21 on the special monitorio claim; Real Decreto-ley 7/2019 for the current reserve fund percentage and accessibility thresholds; Organic Law 1/2025 on the efficiency of the public justice service, in force from 3 April 2025, on appropriate means of dispute resolution as a procedural requirement and on the express three-fifths agreement now required for tourist rental activity; Book Five of the Civil Code of Catalonia, which governs horizontal property in that region instead of the state Act. This page is general information, not legal advice on a specific building, decision or court file.