I have realized that many people are confused about when a decision has passed at a general meeting.

            First of all, we should know distinguished between three different kind of agreements:

1. Some of them require the unanimous consent of the whole community ( modification of the statutes, quota coefficients, etc);
2. Others need the vote in favour of 60% of the owner and quota coefficients (Installation or cancellation of general services, such a elevators, concierge, etc.
3. The rest of the agreements, need the vote in favour of a minimum of 50% of the owners and a minimum of 50% of the quota coefficients.

You may know that every property has a quota coefficient in the whole community and if you sum up the percentages of all of them, you will get 100%.

In this article we will refer to the kind of agreements said in the above number 3, and we would like to talk about the double majority (of owners and quota coefficients) needed to have a decision passed.

It is wrong to think that a decision has been approved when the majority of owner has voted in favour, if this owners do not have the majority of the quota coefficients.

            It is also wrong to believe that an owner who has 10 properties in the community has 10 votes, because there is only one vote for owner, no matter how many properties this owner may have.

            This is especially important because many developers are still the owners of a lot of houses pending to be sold, so the double majority is essential to keep the right of the rest of the owners. Otherwise, if we considered that the developers have one vote per property, they would be able to approve whatever they want. Fortunately they will only have one vote for all their properties, so they would need to get the vote of some others owners to have their motion approved.

            Taking all of this into consideration, let’s imagine three different examples in a meeting with all the owners of a community of 10 properties, being the developer the owner of 6 of them:

            1.- The developer proposes to approve an extraordinary fee and the other four owner vote against. This means that there is 1 vote and 60% of the quota coeficient in favour and 4 votes and 40% of the quota coefficient against, so the decision would not be approved.  

            2.- The developer plus two other owners are in favour. In this case, there would be 3 votes in favour with 80% of the quota coefficient, and 2 votes with 20% of the quota coefficient against, so the decision would have passed.

            3.- Three owners vote in favour, and the other owner vote against. Now there would be a majority of votes in favour, but there would not be a majority of quota coefficient ( 30% in favour and 70% against ) so the motion would have not been approved.

When you get the majority in either votes or quota coefficient, but not in both of them, the judge, in a simple procedure, is the one to sentence if the decision is or not approved. Be aware of this double majority next time you go to any general assembly, in order to avoid developers doing what they want in your community.