Law 10/2022, of June 14, establishes new rights and obligations of owners and new developments in energy rehabilitation.
Last Thursday, June 16, Law 10/2022, of June 14, on urgent measures to promote building rehabilitation activity in the context of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, came into force.
This Law (which is the result of the passage through Parliament of Royal Decree-Law 19/2021, of October 5) introduces a series of amendments to Law 49/1960, of July 21, on Horizontal Property (LPH).
The aforementioned Law 10/2022 was created with the objective of promoting residential building activity, due to the high age of housing in the Spanish state, as well as the low rate of effective rehabilitation of the same.
In this sense, from the preamble of the legal text we can extract the three main reasons that have justified the changes that we will explain later:
- The serious deterioration of buildings and residential properties: more than half of the residential building stock in our country is due to constructions prior to 1980, with 84% of these having poor energy consumption ratings, and 75% being inaccessible.
- The importance of providing a rapid response to national and European challenges in building rehabilitation.
- The great opportunity to allocate, in the short term, a high volume of European resources to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
What are the main changes in the LPH?
The main change introduced by Law 14/2022 has been the inclusion of modifications to the regulations governing building owners regarding renovation works that contribute to improving the building's energy efficiency or implementing shared renewable energy sources. In this respect, a simple majority vote is required for adopting agreements aimed at carrying out such works, as well as for applying for the necessary grants and funding.
In relation to the above, it is established that the cost of said works or actions, or even the payment of the amounts required to cover any loans or financing granted, will be considered general community expenses. In this respect, the powers of the communities to exercise legal capacity when carrying out such operations are further strengthened.
On the other hand, owners are obligated not to alter the building's common architectural elementsand to maintain their property in good condition. This also implies their obligation to contribute to community expenses and prohibits them from engaging in activities that are dangerous or disruptive to other residents.
Debtors
Finally, it should be noted that the legal text also includes modifications to the handling of outstanding payments owed by owners (those in arrears). Specifically, it establishes both preventative measures of a conventional nature and solutions for potential non-payment. In such cases, it stipulates that these disputes may be resolved either out of court through mediation or arbitration, or judicially through the special summary procedure for the collection of community debts.
Specifically, with regard to debtors:
- are given the power to impose sanctions, legitimizing them to sanction defaulters by depriving them of the use of facilities and/or common elements that are not essential and to establish interest rates higher than the interest rate of money, as long as they are not disproportionate, something that the courts were already admitting, but which is now legalized so that there is no doubt about the validity of these agreements.
- Late payment interest will be generated automatically from the expiry date of the community loan, without the need for prior notice.
- The regulation of the special summary procedure for claiming community debts has also been modified to make it more agile, allowing future debts to be claimed in addition to those due at the time of the liquidation agreement, although limiting this possibility to those that accrue up to the time of notification of the liquidation agreement to the debtor.
- The possibility is established that all expenses and costs involved in the debt collection process, including those arising from the intervention of the administrative secretary, may be claimed in the summary proceedings, and these will be borne by the debtor.
You can contact this professional office for any questions or clarifications you may have.
Warm regards,
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A Àmbit Assessor, SL has 40 years dedicated to the tax, comptable and labor consultancy of the Pime.
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