Archive for Condominiums

The Condominium Assembly Meeting: Call to order, decisions and notaries

May 18, 2012 / Solomon Freimuth / No comments

In the next couple of months I am planning on doing a series on condominium law and real estate law in Mexico. This is the first part of the series that I had ready, it is a brief summary of what should happen in the condominium assembly meetings.

The home owners assembly is the most important figure in the condominium, because these assemblies make the decisions that will guide the building’s function throughout the year and make a plan for the administrator to follow.

Calling the meeting: How to call to order a condo assembly

To call the assembly meeting, the building’s administrator or the President of the Oversight Committee has to write up a “call-to-order” that contains the date, time and location of the assembly, as well as the specific points that the assembly meeting will address. These calls to order, according to the Quintana Roo Condominium Law, must be posted in at least five visible locations around the condominium building and delivered to each condominium owner physically or by email, no later than 15 days before the condominium assembly.

Assembly decisions: What kind of decisions are made in a condo assembly?

The condominium assembly makes the decisions needed to run the building, but their intervention with the building can be as general or as specific as they feel necessary: If the building needs to be painted, the assembly should decide what color; if the building needs landscaping, the assembly can decide what flowers to put where; if the building needs a new administrator, the assembly decides who and how much to pay. The only limit to the decisions made by the condominium assembly is that each decision must be included on the “call-to-order” for the assembly in order for it to be legally valid.

Having a Public Notary present at the assembly meeting

Assembly meetings that determine the current budget, change the building’s administrator or oversight committee, change the rules and regulations and/or legally enforce building rules/fees must be legalized by a Mexican Public Notary and submitted to the Public Registry. This process can be done by a delegate, usually the administrator, chosen by the assembly meeting.

In assembly meetings for very large, or very controversial, buildings the law allows the building administration or HOA to request the presence of a public notary in order to certify the veracity of the decisions made during the condominium assembly. Having the notary present is only necessary under extreme situations, as the Notary will charge at least $7000 pesos per hour for his services.

Category: Condominiums, Real Estate in Mexico /

Discontinuing services to non-paying condo owners

February 4, 2011 / Solomon Freimuth / 2 comments

I recently received a couple of inquiries about the new Quintana Roo condo law allowing the condominium association to shut off a particular condominium´s electric services when the condominium owner is behind on his or her condominium dues.  I have heard of similar things happening with water services, or with electric services in commercial applications, but never in a residential setting.

The concept of a condominium is a very broad term which is basically a piece of real estate split into smaller pieces of real estate for sale to separate entities who will then be co-owners of the larger piece of real estate based on the share of private area that they purchased.  All condominium structures contain common elements, which by their nature, are property of all the condominium owners.  These include walls that divide different condominiums, green areas, common drain pipes, the building´s foundation, outdoor lighting, etcetera.  The maintenance and upkeep of these common areas is the responsibility of ALL of the condominium owners and therefore is paid for with the group as a whole, through each condominium owner´s maintenance fees.

Services such as water, security, building-wide internet and any other service that the condominium building pays for so that the whole condominium structure may use the service are also considered common elements.  In many buildings their is a common cistern where the water for the whole building is stored and one (or more) hidro- pneumatic pressure pump supplies pressurised water to the whole building, in which case the building would pay for the water through the maintenance fund and the water would be considered a common service.

There is a provision in the new condominium law that allows condominium associations to discontinue services
which are used in private areas, if those services are paid for with the general maintenance fund, except for water service.  Until this law came into effect, a common recourse for collecting maintenance fees from a condo owner was disconnecting his common water service, which is no longer allowed.  So, condominium associations are looking for new ways to assure payment.

There we have one possibility which may allow a condominium association to disconnect a condominium´s electricity, if the electricity is paid for by common funds: ie. The condominium owners in the building do not pay their own electric bills, instead all of the bills (or one common bill) is paid for by the condominium association.

The stipulates that non-paying owners cannot vote in condominium association meetings, cannot sell their condo until they pay, should be charged interest on their late payments and after three late payments should be taken to civil court.  There is a VERY nasty disposition in the law that allows 75% of the condominium association to decide that owners who recurrently violate condo laws must sell their condominiums by means of public auction, which is an impressive threat, though I haven´t ever heard of it actually happening.

Category: Blog, Condominiums / Tags: , ,

Good news: Foreigners Can Vote in Condo Meetings

January 6, 2011 / Solomon Freimuth / No comments

In a previous post I mentioned that foreigners who owned their condominiums through a fideicomiso were not allowed to vote in condominium association meetings, I need to make a big correction to that statement. On the 30th of November of 2010 the State of Quintana Roo published a new condominium law, in that law the idea of “Condominium Owner” was redefined.

In the previous law the condominium owner was defined as the property owner, which in cases of fideicomisos is legally the bank who writes the trust. The new law changes the definition to say that the “Condomino” or condominium owner is the property owner OR the holder of the fideicomiso rights.

There were other changes in the condominium law, most importantly the prevision of voting by electronic means. The law doesn´t specify any specific electronic means, so anything that is agreed upon by the condominium association is available. I have been in a condominium assembly where someone asked if we could connect a laptop with Skype so that they could listen from Canada, with this new law owners can actually participate and vote in the meeting through video conference from a different continent.

Category: Condominiums, Real Estate in Mexico / Tags: , , ,
 
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