How to Find Out Whether a Property Has Special Assessments (and Why No Online Report Can Tell You)

You buy a flat for EUR 200,000, negotiate hard over every last euro... and two months later the first letter from the property manager arrives: an EUR 8,000 special assessment per unit to refurbish the facade, approved at a homeowners' meeting that you obviously did not attend. It is one of the most common, and most avoidable, shocks when buying a home in Spain.

Every buyer asks the same question: how can I find out before I sign? The honest answer begins with one fact: this information is not available online. It is not in the Cadastre, the Land Registry or any other public authority's records. Anyone promising to detect special assessments automatically for any property is promising access to a database that does not exist.

What is a special assessment, and where is the information held?

A special assessment (derrama) is an extraordinary payment approved by the homeowners' association to cover an expense that ordinary service charges cannot meet: refurbishing the facade, replacing the lift, repairing the roof or completing the building inspection (ITE). It is approved at a meeting and recorded in the minutes, while the property manager administers the amounts, payment schedule and payment status.

In other words, the only authoritative sources on special assessments are the homeowners' association minute books and the property manager's accounts. These are private documents held by the association. They can be obtained for a specific property by requesting them, but there is no way to access them automatically, instantly or at scale, either today or in the foreseeable future.

The document that changes everything: the Article 9.1(e) certificate

Spain's Horizontal Property Act (Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, or LPH) addresses this exact situation. Article 9.1(e) requires the seller, when transferring a property, to provide a certificate confirming the status of debts owed to the homeowners' association. It must be issued by the secretary-property manager and approved by the association president. Without it, the notary will not execute the deed unless the buyer expressly waives the requirement, which you should never do.

The certificate tells you whether the property is up to date with its payments. But note a detail many buyers discover too late: the property itself is liable for homeowners' association debts from the current year and the previous three years, even if the former owner incurred them. The liability attaches to the property, not the person. That is why the certificate is not a formality: it is your protection.

Who pays special assessments approved before the sale?

The general rule under Article 17.11 LPH is that special assessments for approved improvements are payable by whoever owns the property when each instalment falls due. In practice, this means that you will pay any instalments approved before the sale but due after completion, unless otherwise agreed. That is the key point: you can agree otherwise. If you know there is a special assessment with outstanding instalments, you can require the contract to make the seller responsible or deduct them directly from the price. If you do not know, you pay them. Once again, information is money.

How to uncover special assessments step by step, before signing the deposit agreement

• Ask the seller or estate agent directly and in writing: are there any approved or proposed special assessments? Are any instalments outstanding? Get the answer by email. If it later proves false, that email could be invaluable.
• Request the minutes of the last three homeowners' meetings. They reveal not only approved assessments but also those in the pipeline: quotations requested for facade works, recurring complaints about the roof or an ITE due next year. The minutes are an X-ray of the building's financial future.
• Request the latest complete service-charge statement: it will show the ordinary charge and any extraordinary item already being collected.
• Insist on an up-to-date Article 9.1(e) debt certificate before signing the deposit agreement, not merely at the notary's office. If the seller objects to obtaining it, that is useful information too.
• Ask about the building's ITE/IEE: if the building is old enough to require inspection and the result identified deficiencies, works, and almost certainly special assessments, are on the horizon.
• Speak to the property manager, with the seller's authorisation, or to a neighbour in the entrance hall. A two-minute conversation can reveal more about future assessments than any algorithm.

Why you should distrust reports that automatically 'detect' special assessments

The logic is simple: special assessments appear only in the association's private documents; those documents are not held in any public register; therefore, no automated system can read them. If a report generated in seconds shows an assessment amount, the date of the meeting that approved it or outstanding instalments, only three explanations are possible: someone obtained the documents manually for that specific case, an estimate is being presented as fact, or the information was invented. None can be replicated 'instantly, for any property in Spain'.

At Hogarfax, we are direct about this: we cannot tell you a building's special assessments, and nobody can provide them automatically. What we can do is flag the warning signs that often precede them, such as the building's age and risks that tend to result in works, and give you the exact route to the real information, as this guide does: ask the people who hold it.