You have just bought in a community: the first thirty days, step by step

The notary in Puerto del Rosario closes the folder, the seller pushes two sets of keys and a garage remote across the table, and a couple from Milan own an apartment in a complex of fifty in Corralejo. What nobody at the table says is that they have also just joined something: a community of owners, with a budget, a rulebook, a yearly meeting and a secretary who does not yet know that they exist. The Horizontal Property Act hands every new owner a short list of duties and no dates to do them by. This piece puts those duties in order over the first thirty days, as the Act stands in October 2026. The thirty days are our working calendar, not the law's: they are roughly the time until the first fee is collected, and everything below is easier done before that day than after it.

What you joined at the notary's table

Three things came with the flat, whether or not anyone mentioned them. The first is a participation quota, the percentage fixed in the building's title that decides your share of every bill: each owner contributes con arreglo a la cuota de participación fijada en el título o a lo especialmente establecido, according to the quota fixed in the title or to what has been specially established. The second is the community's decisions as they stood on the day you signed. The Act says that Los acuerdos válidamente adoptados con arreglo a lo dispuesto en este artículo obligan a todos los propietarios, resolutions validly adopted under this article bind all owners, and a buyer takes the building as the meeting has left it: the budget in force, the levy voted in March, the pool hours agreed years ago. The third is the flat's own liability for the seller's unpaid fees, hasta el límite de los que resulten imputables a la parte vencida de la anualidad en la cual tenga lugar la adquisición y a los tres años naturales anteriores, up to the part already due of the year of the purchase and the three calendar years before it. That rule, and the certificate that protects a buyer from it, are the subject of our piece on the debt certificate, and we do not repeat them here.

Two things did not come with the flat. The community's register still carries the seller's name, address and bank account, and nobody has given the administrator yours. Putting that right is the work of the first week; the rest of the month is reading what you have joined.

Week one: tell the secretary that the flat has a new owner

The duty sits in the Act's list of every owner's obligations: Comunicar a quien ejerza las funciones de secretario de la comunidad, por cualquier medio que permita tener constancia de su recepción, el cambio de titularidad de la vivienda o local, to notify whoever acts as the community's secretary, by any means that leaves a record of receipt, of the change of ownership of the dwelling or premises. The consequence falls on the seller: Quien incumpliere esta obligación seguirá respondiendo de las deudas con la comunidad devengadas con posterioridad a la transmisión de forma solidaria con el nuevo titular, whoever fails in this duty goes on answering for the debts with the community that accrue after the transfer, jointly with the new owner. The Act lifts that consequence when the community's governing bodies have learned of the sale by some other means or by the new owner's own conclusive acts, or when the transfer is notorious.

So the notice protects the seller, and a careful seller sends it. A buyer should send one too, for a reason the Act does not need to spell out: until the register carries your name, the receipts, the convocation and the minutes go to someone who no longer owns the flat. The name of the person to write to is on a paper you already hold. The debt certificate the seller produced at the notary is signed by whoever acts as secretary, and in a professionally administered community that is normally the administrator. Write an e-mail that asks for an acknowledgement, attach the pages of the deed that identify the flat and the buyers (the notary's simple copy is enough), and give the date of the deed, your full names, your identity or NIE numbers, a telephone and an e-mail.

Week one: an address in Spain, and what happens without one

The second notice goes in the same e-mail. Every owner must tell the secretary el domicilio en España a efectos de citaciones y notificaciones de toda índole relacionadas con la comunidad, the address in Spain for summonses and notices of every kind related to the community. An address in Milan does not meet the rule, and an e-mail address is not what the Act names, although most administrators, ourselves included, send everything by e-mail in parallel.

What happens without that address matters most to an owner who lives abroad. En defecto de esta comunicación se tendrá por domicilio para citaciones y notificaciones el piso o local perteneciente a la comunidad, surtiendo plenos efectos jurídicos las entregadas al ocupante del mismo, failing that communication the flat itself is taken as the address, and what is handed to its occupant has full legal effect. The occupant may be a tenant or a holiday guest. And if the notice cannot be delivered at the flat, it is posted on the community's noticeboard, signed by the secretary with the president's approval, and La notificación practicada de esta forma producirá plenos efectos jurídicos en el plazo de tres días naturales, a notice given in this way has full legal effect within three calendar days. A convocation, a claim for unpaid fees or the minutes that start the clock for challenging a resolution can all reach you that way, validly, while you are in another country.

The choice is practical. If someone you trust collects the post at the flat, the flat can be the address. If not, name a person in Spain who has agreed to receive and forward the community's letters: a relative, your lawyer, the adviser who files your non-resident tax return. Whoever it is, tell the secretary in writing, and again whenever it changes. How the convocation, the agenda and the proxy reach an owner abroad is set out in our guide to the annual meeting.

Week one: the fees, the reserve fund and the levies already voted

Ask the administrator for three things: your quota, the ordinary fee with its calendar, and the list of the levies the meeting has approved, with the date on which each instalment falls due. The dates matter because of one sentence of the Act: Las derramas para el pago de mejoras realizadas o por realizar en el inmueble serán a cargo de quien sea propietario en el momento de la exigibilidad de las cantidades afectas al pago de dichas mejoras, levies to pay for improvements made or to be made in the building are borne by whoever is the owner at the moment the sums fall due. For the works a building needs, conservation and accessibility, the Act charges the flat itself: Los pisos o locales quedarán afectos al pago de los gastos derivados de la realización de dichas obras o actuaciones en los mismos términos y condiciones que los establecidos en el artículo 9 para los gastos generales, the flats remain charged with the cost of those works on the same terms and conditions as article 9 sets for general expenses. Either way, a levy voted before you bought, with instalments that fall due after the deed, will be claimed from you. What you and the seller agreed in the contract decides only which of the two bears it in the end. Our guide to fees and levies explains how each is calculated.

The reserve fund is the other surprise. Every community must hold one, with una cantidad que en ningún caso podrá ser inferior al 10 por ciento de su último presupuesto ordinario, an amount that may in no case be lower than 10 per cent of its last ordinary budget, and the Act describes it as a fund cuya titularidad corresponde a todos los efectos a la comunidad, whose ownership belongs for all purposes to the community. Nothing is refunded to the seller on a sale and nothing is charged to the buyer for joining: the fund stays where it is, and you contribute to it by quota from your first fee.

Then set up the payment. The Act does not say how fees are paid, but it does say what lateness costs: los créditos a favor de la comunidad devengarán intereses desde el momento en que deba efectuarse el pago correspondiente y éste no se haga efectivo, the community's credits bear interest from the moment the payment is due and is not made. There is a second cost at the meeting, which we come to below. A direct debit signed in the first week removes both. Give the administrator the account and sign the mandate; if you prefer a standing order, ask for the reference that identifies your flat, because a transfer the administrator cannot match to a unit is a fee that shows as unpaid.

Week two: the papers to ask for

The seller's file on the community rarely changes hands with the keys. The Act puts the community's papers in two pairs of hands: El secretario custodiará los libros de actas de la Junta de propietarios, the secretary keeps the minute books of the owners' meeting, and the administrator's duties include custodiar a disposición de los titulares la documentación de la comunidad, keeping the community's documents at the owners' disposal. You are now one of those owners. Ask for five things.

• The statutes. They sit in the building's title and may regulate the use of the flats, the expenses and the repairs, formando un estatuto privativo que no perjudicará a terceros si no ha sido inscrito en el Registro de la Propiedad, forming a private statute that does not prejudice third parties unless it has been registered at the Land Registry. Read the registered text: a ban on a use, or a clause that exempts some units from an expense, binds you if it is there.
• The house rules. Pool hours, parking, rubbish, noise. They are normas de régimen interior que obligarán también a todo titular mientras no sean modificadas en la forma prevista para tomar acuerdos sobre la administración, internal rules that also bind every holder until they are changed in the way resolutions on administration are taken. What they may and may not regulate is in our piece on house rules.
• The minutes of the last two or three meetings. The Act says that El acta de las reuniones se remitirá a los propietarios de acuerdo con el procedimiento establecido en el artículo 9, the minutes are sent to the owners by the procedure of article 9, but the last ones went to the seller. They show the works under discussion, the levies voted and the disputes in progress.
• The budget for the year and the last approved accounts. The meeting gathers at least once a year para aprobar los presupuestos y cuentas, to approve the budgets and the accounts. The two documents tell you what the fee pays for and whether the reserve fund is really there.
• The community's insurance policy. You need it to know what your own policy has to cover, which is the work of the third week.

Week two: keys, remotes, cards and meters

None of this is in the Act, and all of it is cheaper on the first day than later. Count what the seller hands over against what the building uses: the keys to the flat, the street door, the letterbox and the storage room, the remote for the garage gate, the cards or fobs for the pool. Ask the administrator how the community issues replacements and what they cost: gates and pool locks are common installations, and their remotes and cards are usually coded through the community rather than bought in a shop. An owner who lives abroad should also decide now who in Fuerteventura holds a spare key, and tell the administrator who that is. Our piece on leaving a flat empty explains when the community may need to get in and who should open the door.

Meters are the other half of the handover. Photograph the water and electricity meters on the day of the keys, so that the seller's last consumption and your first are separated by a reading and not by an argument. Then put the contracts in your name. Where the supplier is the island's public consortium, the CAAF, it will want to see who you are and that the flat is yours: its list of documents for a supply request includes the holder's identity document and the Documento de propiedad: escritura pública (compraventa, herencia, donación), nota simple del Registro de la Propiedad actualizada o certificación registral, the document of ownership, meaning the public deed of sale, inheritance or gift, an up-to-date extract from the Land Registry or a registry certificate. Its electronic office asks for a digital certificate or the Cl@ve system, so an owner abroad usually acts through a representative or in person at the registers in Puerto del Rosario, Corralejo and Gran Tarajal. In an older block with a single general meter there is no contract to change: the community is the consortium's customer and your water arrives on the community's receipt. Ask the administrator which of the two your building is; our piece on water in Fuerteventura explains both.

Week three: the community's insurance and your own

The community's policy insures the building: the structure, the roofs, the stairwells, the pool and, in most policies, the fixed elements of each flat. It does not insure your furniture, your appliances or your liability towards the neighbour below when your washing machine floods their ceiling. That is the work of a home policy in your own name, and an owner who will be away for months should read its clause on unoccupied flats before signing. Neither state law nor Canary law obliges a community here to insure the building at all, so check that a policy exists and what sum it insures. Our guide to the community's insurance explains how to read it.

Before any works: tell the community first

Most new owners change something in the first months: a kitchen, a bathroom, the floors. Inside the flat the Act allows it, within a limit and on a condition. The owner may modify the flat's architectural elements, installations or services cuando no menoscabe o altere la seguridad del edificio, su estructura general, su configuración o estado exteriores, o perjudique los derechos de otro propietario, when that does not impair or alter the safety of the building, its general structure, its exterior configuration or condition, or harm the rights of another owner, debiendo dar cuenta de tales obras previamente a quien represente a la comunidad, and must give notice of such works beforehand to whoever represents the community. Beforehand is the word that matters: the notice goes to the president, through the administrator, before the builder arrives, with the dates and a description of the work.

Outside the flat the rule is one line: En el resto del inmueble no podrá realizar alteración alguna, in the rest of the building the owner may make no alteration at all. A terrace enclosure, an awning or an air-conditioning unit on the façade is not a renovation of your flat: it touches the building, and that conversation starts with the community, not with the builder. The town hall's permit is a separate matter, and neither replaces the other.

Before the first meeting: your vote

You vote from the day you own, and the Act asks three things of a new owner. The first is to be up to date. Owners who, when the meeting starts, have debts due to the community that they have neither challenged in court nor deposited podrán participar en sus deliberaciones si bien no tendrán derecho de voto, may take part in its deliberations but have no right to vote. The second concerns couples and anyone who buys with someone else: a flat owned jointly has one vote, and its co-owners name one representative to attend and vote for all of them. The third is the proxy. Attendance may be in person or by representation, bastando para acreditar ésta un escrito firmado por el propietario, for which a writing signed by the owner is enough; the Act asks for no notary and no apostille.

A new owner may also put a subject on the table. Cualquier propietario podrá pedir que la Junta de propietarios estudie y se pronuncie sobre cualquier tema de interés para la comunidad, any owner may ask the owners' meeting to study and decide on any matter of interest to the community, by writing to the president, who includes it in the agenda of the next meeting.

From Fuerteventura: thirty days in one apartment

Take the couple from Milan. Their apartment is one of fifty in a complex in Corralejo with a pool and gardens, and its quota is 2 %. The community's ordinary budget for 2026 is €90,000, so the apartment pays €1,800 a year, collected in four quarterly receipts of €450, and the reserve fund must hold at least €9,000. In March the meeting approved a levy of €40,000 for a video-intercom system and an automatic vehicle gate, payable in four instalments of €10,000 in July, October, January and April: €800 for this apartment, €200 at a time. The seller paid the July instalment.

They sign on Tuesday 1 September 2026. The debt certificate says that the flat is up to date and lists the levy, with the three instalments still to fall due. That afternoon they count two sets of keys, one garage remote and two pool cards, and photograph both meters. On the Wednesday they write to the administrator whose signature is on the certificate: the pages of the deed, their names and NIE numbers, an e-mail, a telephone and, as their address in Spain, the office of the adviser in Corralejo who files their non-resident tax return and has agreed to receive the community's post. By the Friday they have signed the direct-debit mandate.

In the second week the papers arrive: the registered statutes, two pages of house rules, the minutes of the last two meetings, the budget for 2026 and the policy. The minutes show the levy and nothing else pending. The accounts show €11,300 in the reserve fund, above the €9,000 the Act requires. The policy insures the building and says nothing of contents, so in the third week they take out a home policy of their own. In the fourth they tell the president, through the administrator, that the kitchen and the bathroom will be replaced in November, with the builder's name and the dates.

On Thursday 1 October, the thirty-first day, the community collects €650: the quarter's €450 and the October instalment of €200. The instalments of January and April will bring what they pay of a levy voted before they arrived to €600, exactly the figure the certificate gave them at the notary's table.

What we do in the communities we administer

In the buildings we manage in Corralejo, Caleta de Fuste and the south, a change of owner is one entry and a short list. The day the notice arrives we register the new owner, the address for notices and the bank mandate, confirm in writing the quota, the fee calendar and every levy with its dates, and send the statutes, the house rules, the last minutes, the budget and the policy without being asked. The new owner receives a login to our owner portal, where the statements, the community's documents and the incidents with their photographs are kept, and where the convocation of the next meeting appears with its proxy form. Owners who want their community run that way can read what we do for owners who live abroad and ask for a quote.

Common questions

Who has to tell the community that the flat has been sold, the seller or the buyer?

The Act lists the notice among every owner's duties and puts the consequence on the seller: until the secretary has been told, by a means that leaves a record of receipt, the seller goes on answering jointly with the buyer for the debts that accrue after the sale. That liability ends if the community's governing bodies learned of the sale another way or the transfer is notorious. A buyer should write as well, because until the register is corrected the receipts, the convocation and the minutes go to the previous owner.

I live abroad. Can I give my foreign address for the community's notices?

Not as the address the Act requires, which must be in Spain. If you give none, the flat itself counts as your address and what is handed to its occupant is valid; if delivery there fails, the notice goes on the community's noticeboard and takes full effect within three calendar days. Give the flat, if someone collects the post there, or a person in Spain who has agreed to receive it, and add an e-mail as a parallel channel.

The meeting approved a levy before I bought. Do I have to pay the instalments that fall due after the deed?

The community will claim them from you. For levies that pay for improvements the Act says in terms that they are borne by whoever is the owner when the sums fall due, and for the works a building needs it charges the flat itself with their cost. What you agreed with the seller decides only whether you can recover them from the seller. That is why the debt certificate should list every approved levy with its dates, and why a new owner asks the administrator for the same list in the first week.

Can I vote at the first meeting after the purchase?

Yes, from the day you own, on two conditions. You must be up to date with the debts due to the community when the meeting starts, or you may speak but not vote. And if the flat belongs to two or more people, they name one representative, because the flat has one vote. If you cannot attend, a writing signed by the owner is enough to appoint a proxy.