fred mertz
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I would like a referral of a bi- lingual (Spanish and English ) lawyer. have been having problems with the administrator of my building and a few apartment owners.
Lawyer Needed
- Thread starter fred mertz
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el_expatriado
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It's not worth it. If you can deal with it just ignore it. If you can't deal with it, move out. You won't solve anything by lawyering up.
I bought an apartment once where a former owner had basically annexed a large part of the pulmón of the building to create a sort of patio/comedor right off the kitchen. So a 50 m2 apartment was made into a 80 m2 apartment this way. It was a huge improvement. The apartment would be too small otherwise. I found out later the guy sold the apt to me once the building association was about to sue him for closing off the patio.
For a year or so everything was fine until the residents turned against me because I was renting out the apartment to tourists. They didn't like seeing new faces every couple weeks. So they all banded together and decided to refloat the patio issue as a way to pressure me to stop renting to tourists. They threatened a lawsuit from the building association if I didn't put the patio back the way it was in the original building plans. They also began treating the tourists real badly and inventing fake expenses to charge me through the expensas.
So I finally just caved in and sold the apartment. One less headache. Once I put it up for sale they stopped the nonsense and left my renters in peace for the next 3-4 months while I found a buyer. They were all so happy when I told them I finally sold it. The funny thing is... the new owner planned on renting it out to tourists as well, so the story continues.
I also went to a consorcio meeting once in another apartment I had bought (a 50 yr old building) and the elevator was dead and needed to be replaced entirely. This was expensive and going to mean a huge expense for everyone. So of course this pitted the residents on the high floors against the residents on the lower floors. The guy who had the commercial space on the bottom floor refused to pay entirely and had stopped paying expensas in protest, but the building administrator didn't do anything about it because there was some kind of relationship between both of them.
The building administrator was accused of stealing funds each time someone had to come to repair the elevator. One of the owners accused the father of another owner from having stolen funds from her own parents back when their parents were living in the building. So there were multigenerational fights going on in this building. It became clear that nothing was ever going to be done to fix the issues in this building. So, I sold this apt also.
After that I started buying apartments en pozo. And I learned the hard way that it is worth it to invite the portero out to lunch and get him to tell you everything about all the issues in a building before buying a used apartment.
I bought an apartment once where a former owner had basically annexed a large part of the pulmón of the building to create a sort of patio/comedor right off the kitchen. So a 50 m2 apartment was made into a 80 m2 apartment this way. It was a huge improvement. The apartment would be too small otherwise. I found out later the guy sold the apt to me once the building association was about to sue him for closing off the patio.
For a year or so everything was fine until the residents turned against me because I was renting out the apartment to tourists. They didn't like seeing new faces every couple weeks. So they all banded together and decided to refloat the patio issue as a way to pressure me to stop renting to tourists. They threatened a lawsuit from the building association if I didn't put the patio back the way it was in the original building plans. They also began treating the tourists real badly and inventing fake expenses to charge me through the expensas.
So I finally just caved in and sold the apartment. One less headache. Once I put it up for sale they stopped the nonsense and left my renters in peace for the next 3-4 months while I found a buyer. They were all so happy when I told them I finally sold it. The funny thing is... the new owner planned on renting it out to tourists as well, so the story continues.
I also went to a consorcio meeting once in another apartment I had bought (a 50 yr old building) and the elevator was dead and needed to be replaced entirely. This was expensive and going to mean a huge expense for everyone. So of course this pitted the residents on the high floors against the residents on the lower floors. The guy who had the commercial space on the bottom floor refused to pay entirely and had stopped paying expensas in protest, but the building administrator didn't do anything about it because there was some kind of relationship between both of them.
The building administrator was accused of stealing funds each time someone had to come to repair the elevator. One of the owners accused the father of another owner from having stolen funds from her own parents back when their parents were living in the building. So there were multigenerational fights going on in this building. It became clear that nothing was ever going to be done to fix the issues in this building. So, I sold this apt also.
After that I started buying apartments en pozo. And I learned the hard way that it is worth it to invite the portero out to lunch and get him to tell you everything about all the issues in a building before buying a used apartment.
