Ask the readers: «In a housing complex of stratum 4 houses the administration intends to increase the administration fees according to the number of people living in each house and also increased the quota because some houses expanded, but did not legalize the modified footage of the house. Is this legal?»

Reply

First of all, The administration has no power to increase the value of the administration feesand less if it deviates from what is established in the respective horizontal property regulations and Law 675 of 2001. What the administrator does is prepare the budget and of course the expenses have nothing to do with the number of inhabitants of each private unit .

Although his claim is apparently based on the fact that a greater number of people use common goods and services more (for example, swimming pools, elevators, toilets and security, as happens in many tourist housing complexes), the truth is que the Law orders that the common expenses depend on the co-ownership coefficients and/or of the contribution modules, as the case may be, and, finally, in accordance with what the regulation indicates.

Regarding the common expenses that the owners of properties with extensions must pay, the answer is similar. The administrator could be right, since the additional square meters built were not taken into account when determining the coefficients, but it is not his legal attribution and, in any case, first you have to obtain the construction license (reform and extension) in one of the urban curatorships or planning officeas the case may be, and then the assembly has to approve the reform of the horizontal property regulation and this act, be elevated to a public deed and registered in the Public Instruments Registry Office.

It is necessary to thoroughly review each situation to establish the corresponding procedure that, in many cases, will begin with an approach to the people who made extensions to their homes or they could acquire them already reformed, thus initiating the solution of the conflict.

It should be remembered that, in the case of compliance with urban regulations, The only solutions would be to legalize the buildings complying with these, both within the co-ownership and before the aforementioned entities, or demolishing what was built without a license.

Payment of external services

Question

«Legally I am obliged to pay an additional fee to the administration payment for a motorized vehicle that travels the streets of the sector and is outside the building?. Taking into account that the building has private surveillance and that it did not hire the motorized.»

Reply

If this service is not included in the budget, because it is external to the complex, in principle you do not have the obligation to assume it as such. However, the case must be evaluated from another point of view different from the horizontal property regime since the owners of the complexes benefit from the surveillance of their houses or apartments and, in certain events, these obligations derive from the owners’ associations or come from previous decisions of the assembly to give greater security to the complex.

On this aspect of solidarity and payment for services received, even if you do not have the quality of associate or are external to the horizontal property, The Constitutional Court has ruled on several occasions. Of interesting consultation is, for example, Judgment T-1750 of 2000.

Nora Pabon Gomez
Lawyer – External advisor