The community fee is usually a fixed expense that a family counts on every month. But nevertheless, in December and January some family budgets have trembled upon receiving extraordinary charges, in the form of ‘spill’, to meet central heating costs, in buildings that do not have individual meters.
Property administrators have begun to issue receipts that have been warning that they would be necessary to face the escalation in gas prices. Some are putting homeowners on the spot.
“Since the heating is central, the payment is included in the community fee, which is 250 euros per month”, says a resident of a building in the center of Zaragoza with about thirty homes, who also pay a doorman. “There had never been a spill due to heating,” he says. Never until December and January receipts have nearly tripled and they have gone up to 650 euros. “We pay more for the community than for the mortgage”, he confesses, worried. “And we are not the ones who pay the most,” he adds, since there are larger homes that pay a higher bill. He believes that they have to pay a higher increase because they are not a very large community. “We are suffering the impact because it is central and we are not many neighbors,” he says, resigned to the fact that it is a necessary expense, but he fears that not all owners will be able to afford the increase.
Ukraine crisis
Property administrators had been warning that the increase in gas prices was going to put some neighboring communities in trouble. They even closely follow the diplomatic crisis between Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US to find out if the cost of energy can continue to multiply. “All budgets have been out of phase by 6% in general services due to the rise in the CPI and gas up to 60%”, calculates Miguel Ruiz, president of the association that brings together these professionals in Aragon. The spills or increases in fees are calculated to last until March. “Each community is a world. It depends on the consumption of each one,” he explains. “If the war continues, it will go up a lot more”, predicts, on the repercussion on prices of a hypothetical armed confrontation due to the conflict on Ukrainian soil.
Meanwhile, the neighbors try to reorganize their accounts. In the community mentioned above calculates that until April receipts will remain high, although they hope less than now because the community has changed gas companies to try to save something. The spill was approved at a face-to-face meeting held in a nearby rented assembly hall, the first to take place since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, which still restricts the capacity of these meetings. It was proposed to reduce the hours in which the boiler is turned on, but “elderly people live in the community and it’s not a matter of being cold”, recognize.
These high bills could be better distributed with the installation of individual meters, which will be mandatory from October 2023, although in some older communities they will continue to be non-mandatory. These are those in which the investment cannot be amortized with the efficiency achieved in four years.
From Aessia (Association of entities of the industrial security system) they believe that the reform, although it takes longer to recover the money invested, can be a long-term help. “Perhaps in four years it won’t work out, but it will in six”, points out Luis Ángel Carbó, engineer and manager of the organization. These systems allow you to put “cost allocators”, small counters that are placed on each radiator in each room “so that when that device realizes that it is on, it starts counting,” he explains simply. With that, “each neighbor would pay for what they would be consuming”, he points out, because now “we are throwing away the heating in these buildings in some areas,” he laments.
However, he acknowledges that there are cases where the cost of refurbishing the entire facility would be too expensive because it is an older building. “Not all buildings can be done because there are technical issues that would change everything,” he says.
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