Over the past few years I’ve attended at least 40 community meetings on behalf of my clients. Sometimes because they aren’t here to attend in person. Mostly because I want to be there, and I think it’s part of the job. I’m genuinely surprised at how few agents I see doing the same. I can count them on one hand.
Going to these meetings lets me see what really goes on inside the communities I place clients in. Who’s complaining, what’s working, what’s quietly broken, what’s different than mentioned in the brochure.
I’ve gone back and forth on writing this guide. Part of me thought it gave away too much. Then I remembered the time a fellow agent asked me what one thing I’d recommend they do, and I told them to start showing up at AGMs. The reaction was a sigh and a “those take like 4 hours, yawn.” Nobody is going to do it. So here we are.
This is the experiential guide. The structural one, on community rules, the LPH, fees, fines and how it all legally works, lives over here: https://forumcosta.com/community-rules-in-costa-del-sol-spain-the-hoa-life-nobody-tells-you-about/
This one is what it actually feels like to sit in that room.
The Acronyms You’ll Hear
A few terms get thrown around constantly, often in Spanish, often without anyone explaining them.
AGM. Annual General Meeting. Held once a year. This is where budgets, accounts and major votes get formalised.
EGM. Extraordinary General Meeting. Anything called outside of the AGM cycle. Triggered when something can’t wait until the next AGM, or when 25% of the community pushes for one.
LPH. Ley de Propiedad Horizontal. The law that governs every community of owners in Spain. Anything you read about voting majorities, proxies, fees and obligations comes back to this.
EUC. Entidad Urbanística de Conservación. This is the body that maintains shared infrastructure outside your community walls (some communities dont have this). Roads, lighting, common green areas in the wider development. You pay fees to it on top of your community fees, and it has its own meetings. Often confused with the community itself, which causes a lot of meeting time to be wasted on issues that aren’t actually the community’s responsibility.
Proxy. A signed authorisation that lets another owner vote on your behalf with your specific instructions.
Representation. A signed authorisation that appoints a person, agent or lawyer to attend and vote in your place.
You Bought, You Signed, Now What?
You’ve waited patiently for the build to finish, signed the title deed, furnished the place, moved in. Your lawyer has set up utilities. Water and electricity are running. Then nothing. Weeks pass, sometimes months, and no community meeting in sight.
This is normal.
The first AGM can take time because it usually doesn’t make sense to call one until enough owners have signed and taken handover. Calling a meeting when half the community hasn’t received keys yet is a waste of everyone’s time. So the first AGM tends to land somewhere between a few weeks and a few months after the building is technically finished.
Who Runs Your Community Before You Do
When you signed your title deed, the community was already legally set up a while back. The developer appointed themselves as the community president by default and chose the administrator. So before your first meeting, your community is technically run by people you didn’t pick.
The Community Administrator
This is the management company appointed to actually run the day to day. Maintenance of communal areas, pool cleaning, gardening, security, budgets, organising workers, concierges, organising meetings, chasing community fees, applying community rules, dealing with suppliers, issuing minutes, banking, insurance.
A few important things to know.
The administrator’s responsibility ends at your front door. Anything inside your apartment is yours. Snags, leaks, defects, broken appliances. Your community admin will not report defects in your apartment to the developer for you. The channels for that were given to you with your title deed. I have a separate guide on snagging lists which I’d recommend reading if any of this is new.
Why I keep mentioning it. At almost every community meeting I attend, somebody raises an issue inside their own home. A leaking tap, a broken oven, an aircon unit that hasn’t worked since handover. The frustration is completely understandable. You’ve paid a lot of money, you’ve waited a long time, and things still aren’t right. But the community meeting isn’t the place that gets it fixed. The administrator can’t action it, the developer’s rep usually isn’t authorised to make promises on individual snags, and your neighbours can’t help either. So the time spent on it doesn’t move the problem forward, and the meeting drifts off track.
The frustration is valid. The forum is wrong. Your snag list, your lawyer, the developer’s official channels and a properly worded burofax if needed are what actually move things. The community meeting is for shared issues. Keep the two separate and you’ll get further on both.
The Kickback Reality
The administrator was chosen by the developer. You didn’t pick them. And in many cases, that company paid the developer a hefty incentive to be handed the contract. The developer pockets it, and the new community then funds the recovery of that cost slowly.
Some administrators are excellent. Some are catastrophic. If yours truly, truly is bad and isn’t doing the job. You can get together and fire them. I don’t care if they wave a 5 year contract with the developer in your face. Owners weren’t party to that contract. The developer signed it, often with a kickback attached, and walked off leaving you to pay for it. You’ll win that in court if they really aren’t delivering.
But this is a lengthy process. And if not done properly, can backfire. You need to prepare other companies, get quotes, line up a smooth and instant transition. Otherwise I’ve seen months of downtime where plants and trees died and it became an extra expense the owners needed to pay to the new management to replant.
The practical sequence for replacing an administrator sits later in this guide, for anyone who’s seriously considering it.
A New Build Is Never Perfect on Day One
No matter the budget, no matter the brand. New builds have problems in the beginning. Pools that aren’t running. Dead plants. Broken irrigation. Garage leaks. Lifts not yet certified by the town inspector. Communal toilets that don’t flush. Wifi not set up in the co-work area. Spas not working. Building dust everywhere. Unfinished construction, half the gates still wide open because the next phase is still being built. Construction containers still parked nearby.
If you weren’t warned about this, you’ll be disappointed. If you were, you’ll be patient. It does get resolved. Not on its own, but it does with the right technique.
Why Suing Is Rarely the Answer
Many people, especially northern Europeans and Americans, are used to a legal system where things move when you sue. In Spain, suing is the slowest possible path.
It starts with a formal notice, a burofax, then waiting. Another burofax. More waiting. If you have a strong claim and you push, you might win in 2 to 4 years. Sometimes longer. The developer might appeal, and add another 2 years. They have in-house legal teams and serious money. Their move when threatened is often to freeze every channel of communication, any ongoing works and let you swim through court while their experts and surveyors stretch the timeline.
Sometimes you have to travel to Madrid to formally lodge the appeal. Costs run into thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands if it’s the whole community.
A burofax can be useful. Sometimes the threat of one alone moves things. But the actual IM SUING YOU button rarely produces what people imagine.
After 22 years here, this is the single biggest cultural gap between my American and northern European clients and how Spain actually works. Saying “I’ll sue” doesn’t intimidate a Spanish developer. It tells them to hand the file to their lawyer and stop talking or working with you.
Preparing for Your First Meeting
If you can’t attend, you have two options.
Representation. You appoint someone, your agent, your lawyer, your spouse, to attend and vote in your place. They use their judgement on the day after hearing the discussion. You can tell them what to vote also.
Proxy. Same idea but more rigid. You hand a signed proxy to a neighbour, often with the votes already filled in. Sometimes you let them vote after a short talk on your preferences.
Whichever you use, get it done in advance and properly signed. Showing up with the wrong document or no document means your vote does not count.
Getting Items on the Agenda
This is where most owners go wrong on their first meeting.
If you want something formally voted on, you have to request in writing for it to be added to the agenda before it goes out. Awning colours. Pool hours. Defects. Rental licences. Security. Whatever you care about.
If it’s not on the agenda, it doesn’t get voted on. You can shout about it during All Other Business at the end, but no decision will be taken. So if you’ve been quietly stewing about something for months, get it in writing and submitted to the administrator before they finalise the agenda.
Where and When Meetings Are Held
If your community has a co-working room, social club or any room large enough, the meeting will be there. If not, the administrator or presidents can picks a venue. Sometimes rented office space, sometimes a hotel meeting room nearby.
Mornings are most common. Be on time. They don’t wait for stragglers.
There will be chairs. Sometimes water, tea, coffee. Sometimes nothing. Don’t bet on it.
Who’s Actually in the Room at the First Meeting
You’ll typically have:
The developer, because they’re still legally the community president and need to formally hand over The administrator’s representative A translator, often You and your neighbours
The developer being there is significant. They get a lot of valid complaints, and a lot of personal ones. You’ll hear someone using their floor time to vent about a leaky tap inside their apartment. Painful for the rest of the room, but understandable. Construction workers aren’t paid for perfection, they’re paid for speed, and most things haven’t been tested in real conditions yet. Some developments hand over far better than others. I’ve learned over the years which builders to steer clients away from based on what I learn in these meetings.
The Translator
Meetings are often conducted in Spanish, but most attendees speak English, so there’s usually an English translator present if needed.
A great translator is a quiet hero. They’re fast, neutral, accurate, and they manage the rhythm of the room without inserting themselves. A poor translator changes the entire meeting. They mistranslate, soften the bad parts, skip the awkward parts, or generally just don’t get the meanings right. Sometimes you’ll get earpieces and live interpretation.
The administrator is there too… always ofcourse
How the Meeting Actually Runs
Before the meeting starts, people mingle and introduce themselves in small conversations as they find their seats. You’ll hear “I’m Dave from block 4” about 60 times and remember none of it. Then the show begins.
You’ll want to flag yourself to the administrator before sitting down. Tell them who you are, who you represent, and hand over any proxies. This is how they record votes correctly.
The usual order:
Introductions of the board, developer and admins Review of last meeting’s minutes if it isn’t the first AGM Budgets. What’s been spent. What’s in the pot. Cost breakdowns. What you’re paying for and how much Vote to approve the accounts Vote on next year’s budget, including any service changes. This is where someone always wants to cut concierge hours, debate the cost of pool cleaning, or argue about gardening Vote on agenda items submitted by owners Election of president and any board members AOB and individual questions
The concierge debate is its own minor sport. I’m in favour of one in the early months when nobody knows anything and there’s value in having a person on site who can help. After that, I usually favour scaling them down or out. A bad concierge sits in the booth, looks the part on the brochure, and adds no value. A good concierge is a handyman who fixes small things during shifts and saves the community thousands vs contracting external companies. They also tend to have good local contacts when you need somebody for a job.
Every meeting has someone with a bold idea and zero homework behind it. “Why don’t we just run the community ourselves.” “Can’t we shrink the pool so we don’t need a lifeguard.” The ideas fall apart the moment you look at them properly, but not before eating 20 minutes of everyone’s time. The room usually works through them, eventually.
You’ll quickly clock who the first timers are and who’s been to a few. The first timers tend to escalate fast. The veterans pick their battles, speak less, and vote.
Voting for Your President
After budgets, the developer hands over the presidency. They’re relieved to do it. You then vote on a new community president from the owners.
Sometimes there’s one candidate. Sometimes a few people get up and pitch. Majority wins.
People underestimate this vote massively. The president shapes the next year of your community life. Vote for someone who:
Has experience with budgets and accounts. A lot of the work is financial Lives in the community full time, ideally Speaks Spanish, ideally Cares, and arrives with solutions, not complaints Has the time to actually do it. It’s not a passive role
The President Has Less Power Than People Think
The president is, in theory, a neutral spokesperson for the community when dealing with the outside world. The administrator, suppliers, the EUC, the developer.
In practice, neutrality is a theory.
A president can shape who gets quotes, whose alarm system is chosen, which awning supplier wins a community wide contract, which gardener stays. They can group owners, lobby positions, and yes, there are presidents who quietly take kickbacks from suppliers in exchange for community contracts. Same applies to anyone with influence, not just the president.
Think of it this way. Everyone wants shade on their terrace. Awnings are an exterior matter, so they have to be a uniform colour, voted on. A well placed person picks up the phone and tells an awning supplier “if every awning here is bought from you, what’s our discount, and what’s my personal cut for arranging it.”
Same logic applies to security, gardening, alarm systems and other possible contracts.
This is part of why I show up. To watch how decisions are framed, who pushes which supplier, and who has soft commercial relationships nobody is declaring.
Timing of the Meeting
I haven’t yet been to one under 2 hours. The first AGM is almost always 3 to 4. Later meetings get faster as routine sets in and people stop relitigating issues that were already voted on and gain experience.
Online Attendance and Voting
Spanish law allows for community meetings to be held in hybrid or fully online format under certain conditions. The LPH was amended a few years ago to make telematic meetings permissible, but the community itself has to vote in advance to allow them. Until that’s voted in, online attendees can usually join and listen, speak, but cannot vote. (You need to have a rep or proxy for your vote to count)
In practice, most administrators prioritise physical attendees. They mute online participants for time reasons because if 50 people on zoom with an open mic is chaos, the meeting never ends. Physical attendees vote, carry the proxies, and shape the outcome. Online presence is more about participating.
Worth checking which arrangement your community has voted in, and whether your administrator actually facilitates online attendance properly. Some still won’t.
The WhatsApp Group Power Move
I push every community I’m involved with to set up their own WhatsApp group. A community is a group. Things only happen as a group. Your individual voice has very short reach.
The group itself doesn’t reach the administrator, the developer or the EUC directly. It’s not meant to. It’s where owners talk to each other day to day. “Alarm going off in the garage.” “Anyone else’s water been out since this morning?” “Found a contractor for blinds, sharing the number.” “The tenants from unit X are having a party. Someone parked in my spot, etc.” Real time, useful, neighbourly.
What it gives you over time is awareness. You start to see who’s bothered by what, who keeps raising the same point, what the recurring issues actually are. That’s the raw material the president can take to the administrator, the developer or the EUC, and that other owners can put forward as items on the agenda for the next meeting.
Worth saying, there’s always a direct channel to the management company for reporting issues. Email, phone, sometimes a portal. That’s not the president’s job to relay. If your gate is broken, your lift is stuck, the gardener missed a week, contact the administrator directly. The president is for representing the community’s collective position on bigger matters, not chasing day to day operational tasks on your behalf.
Dividing owners into individual frustrations is far easier for the administrator to manage than one collective request from 50 owners. They know this. So the absence of a WhatsApp group quietly favours them.
Voting on Short Term Rentals
This is one of the votes I always show up for, and it’s one of the most divisive topics a Costa del Sol community will ever face.
Some of my clients want the option to rent when they’re away, to offset costs. Some don’t want to. Some don’t care. All of them are affected by the outcome of this vote, whether they realise it or not.
Most owners walk into the meeting thinking it’s a binary. Allow rentals or don’t. It isn’t. Banning rentals in a community almost always backfires.
The Case for Banning
Most people who vote to ban genuinely believe they’re protecting their quality of life. On paper the reasons make sense:
Less foot traffic in and out of the building Quieter pool, gym, and communal areas Less wear on lifts, gardens, and shared furniture everyone pays for No rotating strangers in the lobby or suitcases banging down corridors at midnight Parking stays predictable
For full time residents this matters most. If you live there year round and your downstairs neighbour changes every four days, you carry the cost of that without any of the income.
The Case Against Banning
This is where it gets uncomfortable for the pro ban camp, because most of these points never get raised in the meeting and I make a point to inform everyone always.
Property values drop immediately. Buyers systematically discard properties when those properties sit in communities with rental bans. Banned properties are almost impossible to sell. A penthouse with grandfathered tourism rights can comfortably outprice an identical penthouse in the same building without them.
if this doesnt convince you, spain largest property portal will: Idealista article
The official goverment statistics show buyers in a new build on the Costa del Sol is on average 52 years old, from northern Europe and uses the property a few months a year. Most won’t switch to long term rentals because of the 6 month plus contract risk and tax residency thresholds. So units sit empty 10 or 11 months a year. Empty units are exactly what okupas look for. (Read my squatter guide here)
Banning doesn’t stop renting, it just moves it. The agencies and platforms disappear, but Facebook groups and word of mouth take over. What you get instead:
Sloppy private contracts with no NRA code No deposits held properly, no insurance, no oversight No agency to call when guests break a sunbed or trash the gym Owners who tell you it’s “family visiting” when you knock on the door Tenants who can’t be held accountable because there’s no paper trail In some cases, contracts so badly written they create squatter risk
You lose enforcement leverage. A managed rental through a proper agency means somebody is answering the phone at 11pm when the music is too loud. Somebody who can charge the guest’s card if they break something. Somebody who screens. None of that exists once rentals go underground.
Banned communities all start to look the same at later meetings. Owners who can’t sell take the first hour. Cost cutting takes the second, because the rental uplift income is gone but the running costs aren’t. Illegal tenants and wear take the third. That’s the pattern across every one I’ve sat in.
The community fee uplift disappears. Most communities that allow rentals vote in a 10 to 20% monthly fee increase on owners who rent, since their guests use communal areas more. That money goes into the same pot that pays for repairs and replacements. Ban rentals and the income vanishes, but the wear from underground rentals doesn’t.
Owners who get caught out have nowhere to turn. I think about a Spanish lady I met while knocking on doors in a community I was advocating in. She’d moved back to Spain after years living in Belgium, bought here to live full time, then had a serious accident that meant she needed to return to Belgium where her family and care network were. Couldn’t rent the place because the community had banned rentals. Couldn’t sell because nobody wanted a banned unit. Her life changed. The community’s rules didn’t.
What This Comes Down To
The vote isn’t really “rentals or no rentals.” It’s “controlled rentals or uncontrolled rentals.” The properties in your community will get rented either way. The only question is whether you sit in a community with rules, registration, professional management, and a paper trail, or one that pretends none of this is happening while it happens anyway.
Enforcement beats prohibition every time. The middle ground options communities rarely vote on:
Minimum stays of 5 or 7 nights to filter out the weekend party crowd Family only or age restricted bookings Mandatory professional agency management Deposit requirements and signed house rules at check in Sanctions and suspensions for repeat offenders A 10 to 20% community fee uplift for renting owners
Spanish law now requires a 60% double majority for a community to ban tourist rentals outright, which usually means there’s room to push for these middle ground conditions instead of an all or nothing vote.
People who stay 7 nights treat the place like a home. People who stay 2 nights treat it like a hotel room they’ll never see again. That alone solves most of the problem the pro ban side actually cares about.
What Happens at the End of the Meeting
After the agenda is exhausted and AOB is opened, attendees can raise individual questions and any remaining topics. Discussion happens. Some of it useful, some of it not.
Then people stay around for a while. WhatsApp groups are exchanged. Numbers swapped. People who never spoke up in the meeting will pull you aside afterwards to share what they actually think. You learn more in the 20 minutes after the meeting than in the 3 hours during it sometimes.
This is also where I tend to meet future clients. People who realise they want to sell down the line, or who have a friend looking to buy.
The Actas and Your 30 Day Window
The acta is the official minutes of the meeting. Every vote, every decision, who attended, who voted what, dissenting opinions. It becomes the legal record of what the community decided.
Two things every non resident owner needs to know.
Timing. The administrator should send the acta within 10 days of the meeting under most community statutes. Sometimes longer in practice. Once you receive it, read it carefully and quickly.
The 30 day challenge window. If a vote was taken that you believe is illegal, unfair to a minority of owners, or violates the LPH, owners who voted against it or who weren’t present typically have 30 days from receiving the acta to challenge it in court. After that window closes, the decision stands. This is why physically not attending isn’t the end of your voting power. As long as you don’t sign off on something silently, you keep options open.
If the acta misrepresents what happened. Write to the administrator immediately, in writing, with your version of what was decided. Ask for a formal correction. Get other owners who were present to back you up. If the administrator refuses, the acta as written becomes evidence in any future dispute, and your written objection becomes your defence.
Keep every acta. Years from now, when you sell, when there’s a dispute with a developer, when a new owner asks why the pool rules are what they are, the actas are the paper trail.
For owners who live abroad, set a calendar reminder. The acta arrives, you have 30 days. Read it the day it lands. Don’t let the window expire by accident.
Extraordinary General Meetings (EGMs)
You’re not limited to one AGM per year. If something needs to be discussed and the next AGM is months away, owners can call an EGM.
To trigger one, you need 25% of the community on board. That’s signatures, names, home numbers, and emails, gathered and submitted to the president and the administrator. The president cannot decline a properly supported request. If they ignore it, the meeting goes ahead anyway and is formally noted. Their refusal is on the record.
In an EGM you can vote on most things. The one limitation is budgets, since the financial year may not be closed yet. Everything else is fair game.
This is the lever most owners don’t realise exists. If your administrator is dragging, your developer is silent, or your community is heading for a vote that wasn’t properly debated, an EGM is how you take control of the timeline instead of waiting another 11 months for the AGM.
The Majorities That Decide Everything
Spanish community law sorts votes into three main thresholds. Knowing which one applies stops you arguing for something that legally can’t pass on the day.
Simple majority. The default. Approving accounts, approving next year’s budget, hiring or firing the administrator, signing supplier contracts, small communal works. Majority of owners present plus those represented by proxy.
Three fifths. Around 60%. Required for bigger structural decisions and now specifically required to ban tourist rentals. The 60% is calculated by both number of owners and participation quota, so a few large units can’t swing it alone.
Unanimous. Anything that touches the title constitution of the building. Converting common elements into private ones, modifying the founding statutes, changing the legal limits of an apartment. In a community of 50 plus owners with absentees and disagreements, functionally impossible.
Lower thresholds exist for things the law actively wants to encourage. Solar panels, EV charging, lifts, accessibility works for owners over 70 or with disabilities. If any of those affect you, ask your administrator which majority applies before the vote.
How Owners Actually Replace an Administrator
Firing your administrator sounds dramatic but is legally a simple majority vote. What kills the process is when owners try to do it without preparing the next chapter.
The sequence that actually works.
Build the case privately first. Document the failures. Unanswered emails, missed maintenance, money sitting in accounts with no breakdown, suppliers complaining they aren’t getting paid on time, fees that keep climbing without cost justification. Screenshots, dates, names. Without that, the meeting turns into he said she said and the vote loses.
Coordinate through the WhatsApp group. Not to publicly bash the admin, but to gauge how many owners feel the same. You need the room mostly aligned before the vote, not on the day.
Line up 2 or 3 alternative administrators before the vote. Get full proposals from each. Their fees, what’s included, response times, what software they use, references from communities they already manage. Present those proposals at the meeting alongside the motion to terminate. Owners who would otherwise hesitate vote yes when they can see exactly who’s replacing the current one and what it costs.
Map the transition before you vote. Bank accounts, supplier contracts, keys, all community documents, insurance, any ongoing claims. The outgoing administrator legally must hand all of this over, but they often drag. The new administrator needs to be ready to take over from day 1 or things fall through cracks.
The vote itself is simple majority of owners present plus those represented. Once it passes, the termination is formalised in the acta and a burofax goes to the outgoing administrator with the effective date. Their 5 year contract with the developer doesn’t bind the community. Owners weren’t party to it.
The risk worth knowing. If you don’t line up the replacement properly, you get a gap. Plants die, pools turn green, suppliers stop showing up, security cards expire. That gap becomes an extra bill for the new administrator to fix. Months of work undone in 2 weeks of limbo.
If the current administrator is performing badly, removing them is your right and the courts back communities on this. Just don’t walk in unprepared.
The Mistakes I See on Repeat
A handful of patterns show up at almost every meeting:
Owners trying to vote on things that aren’t on the agenda. Doesn’t work. Get it submitted next time Owners using AOB to complain about issues inside their own apartment. Wrong forum. Wrong audience. Wrong channel Owners voting for president based on who spoke nicely rather than who has the experience Owners assuming the administrator is independent. They were chosen by the developer, often with kickbacks involved Owners assuming the president is neutral. In theory, yes. In practice, presidents have personal influence and can benefit from supplier relationships Owners assuming the EUC will fix things inside the community. It won’t. The EUC handles everything outside the community walls Owners going legal too quickly. Spain is not the right legal system to play that game lightly Owners voting to ban rentals without understanding what banning actually does to their property value and community fee structure Owners not joining the WhatsApp group. The single biggest leverage tool a community has, and people skip it because it feels like more notifications they don’t want Owners skipping a meeting without sending a proxy or rep. If you don’t show up and don’t appoint someone, you don’t vote. Decisions get made without you and you live with them
Final Thought
A community is a group. Things only happen as a group. United owners get things solved. Divided owners get managed.
The administrator’s quiet preference is a fragmented community. Easier to handle, easier to charge, easier to delay. Your job, as an owner, is to refuse to be that.
Show up. Get items on the agenda. Vote with information. Join the WhatsApp group. Call an EGM if something can’t wait. And vote based on the next 10 years of your investment, not the next 10 minutes of the meeting.
That’s it. That’s the whole game.
If you have an AGM coming up you can’t attend, or you’d rather have someone in the room who knows what they’re watching for, sitting in those rooms for clients is part of what I do. You know where to reach me.