Derramas in Spain: Special Assessments, Mandatory Works and Who Pays (2026)

A derrama is a special assessment the community charges owners for a specific piece of work, on top of the ordinary monthly fee. Two questions cause most of the disputes: does this particular work even need a vote, and if a flat is sold in the middle of it, who actually owes the money. Both have precise statutory answers, and they are not the same answer, which is exactly where buyers and sellers get tripped up.

Information last verified on 23 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Spanish law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Works that need no vote at all

Some work is simply mandatory, and art. 10.1 LPH lists it: work necessary for the adequate maintenance and conservation of the building and its common services and installations, including whatever is needed for basic safety, habitability and universal accessibility, upkeep of appearance, and anything an administration imposes under its legal duty of conservation. Accessibility adaptations, ramps, lifts and similar devices requested by owners housing people with disabilities or residents over 70, are equally mandatory, provided the annual cost after any public subsidy stays within twelve months of ordinary fees, or in any case once public aid reaches 75 percent of the cost. Occupying common elements while that work is carried out is mandatory on the same basis.

For these categories the junta has no discretion to vote the work down; its role is limited to distributing the resulting derrama and setting the payment terms (art. 10.2.a LPH). Owners who oppose or unjustifiably delay an administration's order answer individually for any administrative penalty that follows (art. 10.2.b LPH), and the units themselves become tied to the payment of these costs on the same terms as ordinary general expenses under art. 9 (art. 10.2.c LPH).

Discretionary derramas: the majority ladder

Anything beyond that baseline is discretionary, and the majority depends on what is being approved. Structural alterations and non-required improvements whose installation cost exceeds three months of ordinary fees need three-fifths of owners representing three-fifths of the quotas, and a dissenting owner is not obligated to pay or have their quota changed, even if they cannot practically be excluded from the benefit (art. 17.4 LPH).

Establishing services like portería or vigilancia sits at the same three-fifths tier (art. 17.3 LPH). Accessibility and capped energy-efficiency works need only a simple majority (art. 17.2 LPH), and telecom or renewable-energy infrastructure can pass with owners representing just one-third of the community, though non-voting owners cannot be charged for it unless they later request access (art. 17.1 LPH). The homeowners-association page sets out the full ladder.

Who pays when the flat is sold: exigibilidad, not the vote date

This is where the LPH is precise in a way that surprises people. For a derrama tied to improvement works, liability is fixed by art. 17.11 LPH: the amount is owed by whoever is the owner at the moment the payment becomes exigible, not whoever owned the flat when the junta approved the work. A derrama can be voted while one owner holds the flat and fall due, in one or several installments, after it has changed hands, in which case the new owner owes whatever falls due after the transfer, and the seller owes whatever fell due before it.

That rule sits alongside a separate one, and the two are easy to confuse. Art. 9.1.e LPH gives the community a real lien on the flat itself for unpaid ordinary and extraordinary general expenses, current year plus the three preceding years, and a buyer takes the property exposed to that lien for the seller's arrears within that span regardless of exactly when each amount fell due. In short, art. 17.11 decides who legally owes a specific derrama payment based on its due date; art. 9.1.e decides how far the property itself can be chased for whatever the community never collected. A buyer can owe nothing personally under 17.11 and still find the flat encumbered under 9.1.e if the seller left debts inside that window.

The seller's certificate: how buyers protect themselves

Because of that lien, the LPH builds a checkpoint into every sale. In the public deed transferring the flat, the seller must declare being up to date with the community's general expenses, or state exactly what is owed, and must provide a certificate of the account's status matching that declaration (art. 9.1.e LPH). The secretary issues that certificate within a maximum of seven calendar days of being asked, with the president's sign-off, and a notary cannot authorize the deed without it unless the buyer expressly exempts the seller from providing it.

That certificate is the practical tool that lets a buyer see the exact figure they might inherit under the afeccion real, and it is worth checking against any known pending derrama separately, since an approved-but-not-yet-due assessment may not show up the same way. For what happens when a community goes after the debt itself rather than a buyer, see the unpaid community fees page.

This page is general legal information about Spanish law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case. The controlling texts are the current versions in the BOE.