Chaos at Condo Meeting (Reunión de Comunidad)!

What an ideal condo meeting
would look like

Almost everyone lives in condos or apartments in Barcelona.  There are very few detached homes in the city.  And every condo building has a condo association or as we would say in Barcelona, Comunidad. Each association contracts with a company who is licensed and dedicated to administer the maintenance of the building.  Additionally, in my association, a president and a vice president are elected by the owners.  By law, the condo association needs to call a meeting of the owners at least once a year.  This usually occurs in December and we had ours on Dec 3, which I attended.  And it was a doozy.

I arrived late because I had my Catalan class that afternoon.  Although we have 22 condo units and two commercial units, only 6 condo owners attended and the 2 owners of the commercial units, one which is a restaurant and the other is an artificial flower shop.  The administrator of the condo association company presided over the meeting.  His assistant, the President and the Vice President were there as well.  We went over the income and the expenses of the building for the year.  We also talked about the indispensable need for repairs to this 100+ year old building and the need to temporarily increase our reserves, as the administrator earnestly suggested to us.

This is how our condo meeting felt like
most of the evening

That was the bird's eye view of the meeting.  However, at ground level, it was a chaotic discussion.  My level of confusion only increased as they constantly switched from Spanish to Catalan and back again and again.  The two commercial owners had a list of complaints and their diatribes almost reached the level of blatant insults to the condo company.  The restaurant owner insisted that we were paying way too much money to the condo company for the little work that they do.  The flower shop owner felt that the figures that were presented to us were not correct since she was not able to balance them to her satisfaction.  My next door neighbor, who had major water damage to her unit due to water leaking from the unit above hers, kept insisting that the condo association should fix this problem, although it was already determined that the issue needed to be resolved between the insurance companies of the two units.  Six conversations at once would erupt at various times with the administrator attempting to bring order to this very unruly meeting.

I was barely able to understand all the reasonable and unreasonable issues that were being raised. But one thing became clear to me.  The interests of the commercial owners are very different from the condo owners.  They want to minimize costs at any expense.  Any increase to our association fee, which is currently quite low, means to them a 5 fold increase, since they occupy 5 times the amount of space that a typical condo unit occupies.  The other thing that is clear is that this building is in desperate need of maintenance.  We recently had the front facade renovated.  There are major cracks on the sides of the building, the patios have water leaking in them, the back balconies need to be repaired, and a host of other minor repairs need to be attended to.

I truly don't know how we got there, but in the end most of us agreed to increase our condo fee by 100 euros every quarter and to begin to do a thorough assessment of the repairs needed and to prioritize those that need to be done first.

Getting More Personal

Speaking of building issues, for the past year, my neighbor below me has been having water leaking into his condo every now and then, generally during heavy rain storms, which we do not have often here.  The mystery is where this water is coming from.  He had his insurance company looking at it, the condo association insurance company investigating it, and when we had the facade of the building renovated, the contractor who did that work also was involved in trying to determine where it might be coming from.  My neighbor is a very kind and reasonable man, in his late thirties, early forties, I presume.  He and these other agents at various times also wanted to look at my bathroom, which is above the location where he is having his water issues.  BTW, his water issues started occurring before I bought my flat.

The possible culprit in this Y junction

Finally, about two weeks ago, they discovered that inside the large drainage pipe that goes down the outside building and passes my bathroom, using a powerful flashlight, they could see what seemed to be another drain pipe that was coming out of the building, apparently from my bathroom, and protruding into the community drain pipe.  This could very well be the cause of the problem.  You see, when there is a heavy rain and water is streaming into the drain pipe from the roof terrace, the theory is that it would hit the protruding pipe and the water would build up and back into the building, which would then leak into the space between my floor and his ceiling.  The other issue is that the Y junction that goes from the building into the vertical drain pipe is at a low downward angle, making it easier for the water to back fill.

When they discovered this, they, being the condo administrator, the vice president, the condo contractor and my neighbor, while visiting my place again, discussed the option of opening up the wall behind my toilet to verify their suspicions.  When I asked about who would pay for this, the answer seemed vague.  This is where my level of Spanish may have been lacking.  In principle I was agreeable to have them do this work, but I first wanted to have my insurance company also look at the issue and to find out that if it was coming from my condo, whether they would cover the cost of the work.

My insurance company did come and my neighbor was also here for their two visits, but they did not think that my policy would cover this cost.  Most insurance contracts do not cover problems that are the result of faulty construction.  Whoever worked on the bathroom under the prior owners seemed to sloppily install the drain pipe that leads out of my condo.  I am now waiting on my insurance company to make a final determination.

The hopeful news is that my neighbor explained to me the full contents of the conversation that he, the administrator, the vice president and the contractor had in my presence, but I did not fully follow, which was that the association would replace the Y junction, which is the property of the building, with a more inclined Y junction.  At that time, they would also ¨fix¨ the protruding pipe coming out of my bathroom.  They talked about sharing the cost, since it would be repairing both the community property and my property.  So, in most likelihood, I would not bear the full cost of this repair.  I will know for sure in the next few weeks.