Mazarrón Country Club - Debtors and Debt Control

DEBTORS

For me, this story starts with the Debtors List for an AGM. To be honest the total amount of Debt, at first glance, looks terrible and a major concern at over €850K and this is why I first became involved with the Debtors on our fantastic Urbanisation of Mazarrón Country Club.

If I may first explain how the total debt is made up, it is not as bad as it first appears and my apologies to some of the Owners that have been here for a number of years and already know this detail but we probably have many new owners who might not know the background facts.

Background

It is my understanding that when the original builders Huma went into liquidation following the financial crash in 2008, there were 3 Manzanas that had not been finished and are still untouched. They are Manzanas 38, 39 and 40 which are all around the rear of the Urbanisation along with 20 plots on Manzana 23

One of the many things Huma did was to form a “Shell Company” called Thader, which has no office address, website or contact information or details of its owners or directors.

The ownership of these 3 Manzanas and the 20 plots on Manzana 23 were transferred to this company and later charged with numerous embargo's from the Hacienda, Departments of Social Security and many of the suppliers and clients.

As you are probably aware all properties and plots here on MCC are subject to a Community Fee.

This means that these 3 Manzanas, the 20 plots on Manzana 23 and the remaining empty plots owned by banks and companies are all incurring the monthly Community Fees and this outstanding debt is now 92% of the total debtors figure and increasing.

This Thader is not to be confused with the other construction company with a very similar name that has built major shopping centres such as Thader opposite Nueva Condominium in Murcia.

What is happening

The management of the debtors is a time consuming and at times, a challenging area of responsibility.

At the time of writing this there have been over 950 emails sent and 750 received in an 11 month period, this is in addition to the emails going to and from the office.

When, for whatever reason, an owner misses a payment they will be sent an email letting them know that the payment to us has not been received.

Over the years, on a number of occasions, we have come across the situation where owners have encountered problems with their banks and they have had, for some reason, their accounts frozen and the first time they know about it is when they receive an email from us.

Then, despite the owners best efforts, it has taken them months to resolve the problem and in some cases the lack of help from the bank has been surprising and disappointing.

Water

Because of the way we receive and pay for our potable water from Aqualia, it means that we are also responsible for the management of any outstanding water debts.

Once again, in many cases, the first time owners know they have a debt is when they receive an email from us. Over the last couple of years we have been working through some of the historic debts where a payment has been missed and the owner may not have known about it. A number of these have been at the time of a change of ownership, when the water bill has been due during that time.

The latest problem we have encountered is that for some unknown reason Caixia Bank put the description of payment as Land Rental/Fincas Alquileres instead of Agua or Aqualia.

Some owners were advised to return the direct debit as it was not known what it was for. As you can imagine this caused confusion and additional work for the volunteers as understandably some owners thought their Community Fees had been taken twice.

And Finally

I am very pleased to say that we have an owner, who puts an enormous amount of her time and energy into reducing the amount of debtors we have, and in the vast majority of cases, into helping the owners to resolve their problem.

There is a small and slowly reducing number of Owners who, for whatever reason fail to pay their Community Fees or Water Bills. These owners we are actively pursuing.

I hope that this gives some indication of the level of voluntary work that is being done and the amount of voluntary time that is being given into managing and controlling debtors within our Urbanisation.