Community fees in Spain: what you pay and who decides
In 30 seconds
A Spanish apartment comes with automatic, unavoidable membership in the comunidad de propietarios. A vote sets the fee, not you. Expect 900 to 6.000 € a year, and treat this range as the most important number that no listing tells you.
| Plain blocksmall pool, no lift | 1.200 €/year |
|---|---|
| Gated developmentheated pool, lifts, manned entrance | 4.200 €/year |
| Annual difference | 3.000 € |
Can you opt out of the comunidad de propietarios?
The comunidad de propietarios is the owners’ community that runs the shared parts of a development and sets the monthly fee, and it is close to a Czech SVJ without being the same thing. Membership comes with the deed, not by choice. The roof, the stairs, the lift, the pool, the gardens, the corridor lighting, and the water that feeds all of it are shared, along with the bill for them.Membership is not something you sign up for. It exists because the property exists. The rules come from national law, the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, plus the statutes of your specific building.
What buyers assumeWhat is really the case
- I can leave the community if I do not use the pool
- You cannot. Your share is fixed by the participation coefficient written into the deed of the building. It is calculated from your floor area and position, not from what you use. Never opening the pool gate does not reduce it.
- The fee is whatever the administrator decides
- The administrator prepares the budget and collects the fee. The owners approve it. The general meeting votes on the annual budget, and it must be held at least once a year. The administrator carries out that vote. He does not set the price himself.
- Every building has a comunidad
- Almost every building you would buy into does. A building with no more than four owners can instead be run under the simpler rules of the Civil Code. This sounds attractive, but in practice it means fewer written rules, no reserve fund, and no one required to keep minutes.
- My tenant pays it while they live there
- The owner is the debtor. You can agree with a tenant that they pay you back, but the community will still come after you, not them. This matters more than it sounds if you rent the property out and change tenants often.
Who runs the community day to day?Three roles, and only one of them must be an owner. The owners elect the president from among themselves, and he is usually a neighbour, not a professional. The administrador de fincas is normally a paid outside firm. It handles the accounts, the budget, and the collection. The secretary keeps the record. Terms are typically one year, which is why a community can feel well run one year and badly run the next.
What does the community fee really buy?
The fee pays for the shared parts and the shared services. What varies between two developments is not the list of categories but how many of them exist and how expensively they are run.
- Cleaning and gardens: inside the feeCorridors, stairs, entrances, communal planting and irrigation. Mature gardens on a coastal urbanisation are a large recurring cost, not a decoration.
- Pool: inside the feeWater, chemicals, cleaning, pumps, and a lifeguard where required. One pool shared by twenty apartments costs each of them far more than one shared by two hundred.
- Lifts: inside the feeMaintenance contract, legally required inspections, and repairs. An old lift in a small block often causes an extraordinary levy.
- Communal electricity and water: inside the feeLighting, gates, pumps, irrigation, and the water used in shared areas. This cost depends mostly on energy prices and how much of the site is lit.
- Communal insurance: inside the feeThe policy on the building and the shared areas. Its cost depends on the value of the building. This is not your own insurance policy.
- Security, concierge, reception: inside the feeA gate, a camera system, a patrol, or a staffed desk. Twenty-four hour staffed security means paying salaries, and it is the single biggest reason for the difference between a modest fee and a high one.
- The administrator: inside the feeThe firm running the accounts, budget, meeting, and collection. Usually a small cost, but still worth checking: a cheap, absent administrator often leads to expensive problems.
- Your own home insurance: outside the fee, and yoursYour walls, contents, and liability to the flat below. The communal policy covers the building and shared parts only.
- Repairs inside your apartment: outside the fee, and yoursYour boiler, air conditioning, and private terrace tiles. The statutes define where the private part ends and the shared part begins. This is the most common argument in Spanish apartment life.
- Public roads and services: outside the feeThe street, public lighting and refuse collection, paid through local taxes. Some urbanisations do maintain their own internal roads.
- Commercially run facilities: outside the feeA golf course, beach club, spa or gym operated as a business on the site. Being inside the gates does not mean being inside the fee.
Read your own building’s list, not this one. Two developments a hundred metres apart can have completely different answers for half of these items. Only the statutes and the budget can settle it.
Why do some apartments have two community fees?Because large Costa del Sol developments are often built as a set of blocks inside a master community. Your block has its own budget for its own lift, entrance, and pool. The master community bills separately for the roads, the gates, the main gardens, and the perimeter security. That means two invoices, two budgets, and two sets of minutes. Nobody selling an apartment volunteers the second one, so you have to ask about it yourself.
How much does the community fee cost?
Somewhere between about 900 and 6.000 € a year for an apartment. The range is this wide for a real reason, not out of caution. The fee does not depend on the purchase price. It depends on what the development has, and how it is staffed.Four things drive almost all of the difference.
- How much shared infrastructure existsPool, lifts, underground parking, gates, irrigation. Each one means a maintenance contract, an energy bill, and a repair fund. A simple block with one small pool and no lift almost always sits near the bottom of the range.
- Whether the services are people or equipmentA camera is a one-time purchase. A staffed gate is an ongoing salary, and it is the single most reliable way to push a fee from the middle of the range to the top. Reception, concierge, and daily gardening work the same way.
- How many owners share the costThe same swimming pool, divided by twenty apartments or by two hundred, produces two very different fees. This is why a small boutique development with resort-level facilities can be the most expensive apartment to own on a street.
- Whether there is one community or twoA block inside a master urbanisation pays into both. Ask for both budgets, or you are comparing one apartment’s full cost with another apartment’s half.
The worked example above, at the top of the page, shows what this does to a real purchase. The second apartment may well be worth every euro of it. The mistake is not paying a high fee. The mistake is comparing two prices and thinking you have compared two costs.
How do I find out the real fee before I make an offer?Ask for the current budget and the last invoice, not a number from the advert. The budget shows the total. Your participation coefficient shows your share. The invoice shows what is really being collected, and how often. If a seller or an agent can only give you a monthly figure with no document behind it, that answers a different question.
Who decides the fee, and by what majority?
Almost everything that changes your fee is decided at the general meeting. The majority needed depends on what is being decided. This is worth understanding, because it tells you what a community can do to you, and what it cannot.Two vocabulary items first. A cuota de participación is your fixed share, written into the deed of the building. A derrama is an extraordinary levy: a one-off charge on top of the ordinary fee, usually for a repair or an improvement the ordinary budget cannot absorb.
- Simple majority
- What it can decide
- The annual budget and ordinary expenses. At a second call, a majority of those present representing more than half the quotas present.
- Legal citation
- LPH art. 17.7
- Three-fifths
- What it can decide
- Setting up or removing a general service (porter, concierge, security), and approving, limiting, conditioning or prohibiting tourist renting.
- Legal citation
- LPH art. 17.3 and 17.12
- Unanimity
- What it can decide
- Changing your participation coefficient, or anything the statutes do not already list.
- Legal citation
- LPH art. 17.6
| What is being decided | Majority needed | Where it says so |
|---|---|---|
| The annual budget and ordinary expenses | A majority of owners who also represent a majority of the participation quotas. At a second call, a majority of those present representing more than half the quotas present. | LPH art. 17.7 |
| Setting up or removing a general service: porter, concierge, security | Three fifths of all owners, who also represent three fifths of the quotas. | LPH art. 17.3 |
| Allowing, limiting, conditioning or prohibiting tourist renting | Three fifths of all owners, who also represent three fifths of the quotas. | LPH art. 17.12, as amended with effect from 3 April 2025 |
| Changing your participation coefficient, or anything the statute does not list | Unanimity of all owners. | LPH art. 17.6 |
| An improvement that is not needed for the upkeep of the building and costs more than three monthly ordinary payments | Owners who voted against are not obliged to pay for it. If they want it later, they buy in at updated cost. | LPH art. 17.4 |
| Works to remove barriers and provide access for disabled or older residents | Obligatory even without a vote, where the annual charge does not exceed twelve monthly ordinary payments. Anything above that is on whoever asked for it. | LPH art. 10.1.b |
| The reserve fund | Not a vote. The fund can never be less than 10 % of the community’s last ordinary budget. | LPH art. 9.1.f |
| Challenging a resolution you think is wrong | Three months from the decision. One year if the resolution is contrary to the law or to the statutes. | LPH art. 18.3 |
A levy was voted through and I was against it. Do I have to pay?For an ordinary repair the building needs, yes, and your vote does not change that. There is one real exception. An improvement that is not necessary for the upkeep or safety of the building, and that costs more than three monthly ordinary payments, cannot be charged to owners who voted against it. If you later want to use what was built, you pay your share, brought up to date. And if you believe the decision itself was wrong, you have three months to challenge it.
Can the community stop you renting the apartment to tourists?
Yes, and since 3 April 2025 it does not need a special reason to do this. A community can approve, limit, set conditions on, or forbid tourist renting in the building, by a three-fifths majority of owners representing three fifths of the quotas. Before this change, the wording was narrower.The change does not apply backward. An owner who was already renting in line with the tourism rules before that date may continue, under the conditions and time limits of those rules. Someone buying now has no such right to protect. This is exactly why the two situations get confused: a neighbour who rents out their apartment is not proof that you will be allowed to.
- Does the region and municipality permit it?Who decidesAndalusian and municipal tourist-renting rulesWhat it grantsLicensing is possibleIf noRenting is not available, no matter what the community decides.
- Does the property qualify for a licence?Who decidesThe municipal licensing regimeWhat it grantsA licence can be obtainedIf noNo community vote can substitute for a missing licence.
- Has the community approved, or not prohibited, it?Who decides3/5 of owners and quotasWhat it grantsRenting is permitted in this buildingIf noThe community can prohibit it outright, by the same three-fifths majority.
Our own position on this has not changed, and we are not softening it for a web page. We verify the possibility of renting before the reservation, whenever renting is part of why you are buying. If it cannot be verified, we tell you so, and it is a reason we have advised clients not to proceed.
I already rent my apartment to guests. Does the 2025 rule stop me?Not by itself. The change applies from 3 April 2025 and does not apply backward. So an owner who was already renting in line with the tourism rules before that date can continue, under the conditions and deadlines those rules set. This means the protection is attached to a situation, not to a property, and a new buyer does not inherit it. If you are buying from someone who rents out the apartment, ask your lawyer exactly what transfers with it, because the honest answer is often less than the seller believes.
How do you pay the fee and vote from Czechia?
By direct debit, from an account the administrator can draw from. And by written proxy, given to another owner or a representative. Both of these depend on the same thing: somebody reading the post. The community is the part of Spanish ownership that keeps asking for a response. When a payment bounces, nothing dramatic happens on day one. But it does not stay harmless. The current owner is the debtor. A community that is not paid can claim through a fast court procedure, with the costs falling on the debtor, and the debt attaches to the property itself. The realistic risk for a non-resident is not refusing to pay. It is not noticing.
- Option 1Direct debitHow the fee is really collected, from an account the administrator can draw from.
- What it does
- Pays the fee automatically
- Effort
- Low, set up once
- Risk if skipped
- A bounced payment is the commonest single failure
- Option 2Written proxy voteAllows another owner or a representative to vote for you at the general meeting.
- What it does
- Casts your vote
- Effort
- Medium, per meeting
- Risk if skipped
- A decision passes while you are unrepresented
- Option 3A read relationship with the administratorAn email address you really read, so notices and minutes reach you.
- What it does
- Keeps you informed
- Effort
- Low, one email
- Risk if skipped
- You do not notice a problem until it is a debt
Can I see the community accounts before I own the apartment?Not directly, but you can get all of it anyway. The right to inspect the accounts, the contracts, and the minutes belongs to owners, and the seller is an owner. So the request goes through them, in writing, as a condition for you to continue: the budget, the last two sets of minutes, and the reserve balance. A seller who will not pass on documents they are entitled to have has told you something useful, about the community or about themselves.
What to ask for before you pay a reservation
Six documents. Ask for them in writing, before the reservation, not during the legal check. They can change whether you want the apartment, not just whether you can buy it safely.| Ask for | What it tells you | What a bad answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| The current annual budget | The total the community is spending this year, line by line, and your share of it once you apply your participation coefficient. This is the only honest source for "what is the fee". | A monthly figure quoted verbally with no document behind it, or a budget from two years ago. |
| The minutes of the last two general meetings | What the community argued about: the lift, the roof, the pool, the security contract, the tourist renting question. This is where you can see a levy coming, before it exists. | "The administrator does not release those." They are the owners’ documents and the seller is an owner. |
| The reserve fund balance | Whether the community has money for the next repair. The law sets a floor of 10 % of the last ordinary budget, and a community sitting exactly on the floor with an old lift is telling you something. | A number with no date, or a fund that has been at the minimum for years. |
| Any levy pending, agreed or discussed | A derrama that has been voted is a cost you are buying. One that has been discussed but not voted is a cost you are probably buying, and it is negotiable while you are still a buyer. | Silence. The minutes are the cross-check, which is why they are on this list. |
| The statutes and the internal rules | What you may and may not do: renting, pets, terrace glazing, awnings, parking, and where the private part ends. The statutes can be stricter than national law, and often are. | "The usual rules apply." There is no usual. Each community writes its own. |
| The certificate of the debt position | Confirmation from the administrator of what is owed on the apartment. Your lawyer requests it before completion, and it is the document that stops somebody else’s arrears becoming yours. | An assurance from the seller instead of a certificate from the administrator. |
Two apartments at the same price, one low fee and one high
This is a real choice, not a formality, and neither column is the right answer. What matters is knowing which one you are choosing.| Lower fee | Higher fee | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are paying for | A pool, gardens and lighting. Sometimes a lift. | A staffed gate, a heated pool, reception, mature gardens, several lifts, sometimes a gym. |
| Ten-year cost | Predictable and low. It is the line in your annual budget you can forget about. | Tens of thousands of euros over a decade. Worth it for some owners, and every owner notices it. |
| Leaving it empty for months | The fee runs anyway, and there is less being maintained while you are away. | The fee runs anyway, and the thing you are buying is that somebody is there while you are not. For an owner who visits three times a year this is the argument. |
| Renting it to guests | Fewer facilities to photograph, and a lower nightly rate in a market that competes on pool and security. | Easier to rent, and easier to justify a rate, if the community allows renting at all. This permission is not linked to the size of the fee. |
| Risk of an extraordinary levy | Higher than it looks. A small community with a thin reserve and an old lift has nowhere to absorb a repair from. | Usually lower, because the reserve is larger and the maintenance is continuous. Usually, not always: ask for the reserve balance. |
| Reselling | A low fee is a genuine selling point to a cost-conscious buyer, and a tired building is not. | A well-kept development sells itself, and a looming levy with a thin reserve is the hardest thing on this table to sell around. |
A community meeting once decided a purchase
One of the four purchases where we advised a client not to complete turned on this exact subject. The apartment was right, the budget was right, renting it out was part of the plan, and the reservation deposit was already paid. What decided it was an item on the agenda of a meeting the client did not know was happening. We waited for the vote instead of pushing ahead. The vote did not allow what the purchase was for, and the deposit came back.The case is written up properly on the page that carries all four of them, and it is not repeated here in short form.
This is how the law works, not how your building works
This is general information about how Spanish community law works. It is current as of 17 August 2026, and based on the source text, not copied from another guide. It is not legal advice about your building. The statutes of a specific community can be stricter than national law. The law itself has been amended many times, and will be again. The only documents that decide anything are the ones attached to the apartment you are buying. An independent lawyer reads those before you commit, and that is not a formality we are talking you out of.We also do not run your community, sit on its board, or vote for you. What we do is get the six documents above in front of you before the reservation, not after it, and tell you plainly when what we read is a reason not to buy. Two related topics belong elsewhere on purpose: the whole annual bill, including local property tax and the non-resident filing, and what happens when a previous owner leaves arrears behind. Both have their own pages, and both are checked by the lawyer, not by us.One last honest note about these numbers. The 900 to 6.000 € range is our own published figure for an apartment, and it is wide because reality is wide too. We have per-property fee data in our catalogue, but we have not yet turned it into a distribution you could read. So what you get here is a range and an explanation of what moves it, not an average dressed up as a fixed fact.
Frequently asked questions about community fees
- Is the community fee negotiable?
- The fee itself, no. It is your share of a budget approved by the owners, and the share is fixed in the deed of the building. What is negotiable is the purchase price, when a cost is coming. A levy that has been voted, or a repair the minutes show is being discussed, is a number you can put on the table while you are still deciding. After completion, it is simply your bill.
- Can the community raise the fee without asking me?
- It can raise the fee without your agreement, but not without asking the owners. The budget goes to the general meeting every year, and it passes with a majority of owners representing a majority of the quotas. So a fee can rise even while you vote against it, or while you are in Czechia and do not vote at all. This is why receiving the notice matters as much as attending. The meeting happens whether you read the email or not.
- How is my share of the fee calculated?
- From the cuota de participación written into the deed of the building. This is based on your floor area and your position in the building, not on what you use or what you paid. It is shown as a percentage. It applies to the ordinary budget and to any levy, and it cannot be changed without the agreement of every owner. So you can know the fee you will pay before you buy: the community budget, multiplied by a number printed in a document.
- Does a high community fee make an apartment harder to sell?
- Not on its own. Buyers on this coast expect to pay for a pool and a gate. A well-run development with a healthy reserve fund is easier to sell than a cheap one that has been putting off repairs. What is genuinely hard to sell is the combination: a high fee, a thin reserve, and a levy visible in the minutes. To the next buyer, this looks like a bill they are inheriting, and they would be right.
- Is a villa outside a community cheaper to own?
- On this one line, yes. On the total, usually not. With no community, there is no fee, but also no shared pool maintenance, no shared gardener, and no shared insurance. You pay for your own pool, your own garden, your own security, and your own repairs, all at full price, not split two hundred ways. Which is cheaper depends entirely on the property, the same answer as everywhere else in this comparison.
