Rules for business premises in Spain
Property manager (administrador de fincas)
The administrador de fincas is the person who manages an owners' community in Spain: drafts the budget, sees to upkeep, orders urgent repairs and collects and pays. The Horizontal Property Act simply calls this role the ‘administrador’ and lets an owner or a professional fill it (arts. 13 and 20).
Also known asadministrador · community administrator · managing agent · block manager
What the law says
The LPH, the Spanish Horizontal Property Act, does not use the phrase ‘administrador de fincas’: it speaks of the administrador, one of the community's governing bodies (art. 13.1.d). If the owners' meeting does not appoint anyone separately, the chair carries out those duties (art. 13.5). The post may be held by any owner, by an individual “with sufficient and legally recognised professional qualifications” or by a company (art. 13.6), and the appointment lasts one year unless the community's rules say otherwise (art. 13.7).
The duties are listed in art. 20.1:
- keeping watch over the proper running of the building, its installations and services;
- drafting the plan of foreseeable expenses and putting it to the owners' meeting;
- seeing to the upkeep of the building, “ordering the repairs and measures that are urgent and reporting them immediately to the chair”;
- carrying out the decisions on works, and making payments and collecting dues;
- keeping the community's documents and, where relevant, acting as secretary.
An example: the gym on the ground floor notices water running down the changing-room wall from the shared downpipe. Its owner, like any owner who spots the need for an urgent repair, must report it “without delay” to the administrador (art. 7.1); the administrador can send a plumber without waiting for a meeting and reports afterwards. If the gym is a tenant, the practical step is to tell the owner of the unit at the same time, since the owner is the one who belongs to the community.
Worth knowing
The law does not define ‘urgent’ or put a number of hours on ‘reporting immediately’. Works that are not urgent are approved by the owners' meeting (art. 14.c), and the LPH does not require a professional manager to belong to a professional association either: it asks for a recognised qualification. In Catalonia, the duties are set by art. 553-18 of its Civil Code, which lets the manager decide urgent upkeep and repair works and report them immediately to the chair.
Sources
Related terms
- Horizontal property (propiedad horizontal)Horizontal property (propiedad horizontal) is the Spanish legal regime for a building divided into flats or commercial units: each has its own owner and shares the common parts with the rest according to its share. It is governed by Ley 49/1960 (LPH), except in Catalonia, whose Civil Code has its own rules.
- Special levy (derrama)A derrama is a one-off sum shared out among the owners in a Spanish owners' community to pay for a specific piece of work or improvement, on top of the regular service charge. The Horizontal Property Act uses the word in its arts. 10.2.a) and 17.11 without ever defining it.
- Reserve fund (fondo de reserva)The fondo de reserva is the money every Spanish owners' community must set aside for upkeep, repairs, renovation, accessibility and energy-efficiency works. The Horizontal Property Act sets its minimum at 10 per cent of the latest ordinary budget (art. 9.1.f); Catalonia has its own rule.