Condo management in Argentina

The law divides authority three ways, and most internal conflicts come from not understanding that the council does not manage and the administrador cannot decide alone anything the assembly has not expressly delegated.

The Código Civil y Comercial of 2015 made the consejo de propietarios mandatory, where before it was optional and almost nobody formed one. Since then every consorcio must have one, with at least one owner in buildings of up to ten units, and at least three in larger ones.

The council does not manage: it audits. Its job is to oversee the administrador, review the books, approve or reject each account before it reaches the assembly, and be available to any owner who wants to consult the consorcio's documentation. It is also the body that convenes the assembly if the administrador does not, and the one that can file a lawsuit to remove the administrador if there are serious irregularities.

In practice many consorcios have a council on paper but not in reality: names that appear in the minutes but never review anything. That is fine until a problem appears and everyone discovers nobody was watching.

The consorcio can elect one of its owners as administrador or hire a professional. The decision is usually made looking only at cost, which is the easiest parameter to compare.

Unpaid management by an owner works while the building is small, the neighbor who accepted has availability, and the rest respect their time. It breaks down almost always in the same place: the person cannot sustain the administrative load and the attention at the same time, and when they resign they take with them everything they knew, because nothing was recorded anywhere.

The professional administrador charges fees — typically a percentage of the ordinary expensas or a fixed amount per unit — and brings method: tidy reports, organised files, vendors with track records. What it does not always solve is availability: an administrador with twenty buildings receives queries from twenty buildings, and that is where response time becomes the most cited problem, even when the accounts are impeccable.

Three questions worth asking before hiring:

The expensas ordinarias cover the month's running costs: doorman, cleaning, common-area electricity, elevators, scheduled maintenance, insurance, administrador fees. They are calculated on each functional unit's percentage, which appears in the reglamento de copropiedad and is usually tied to floor area, though not always in a strictly proportional way.

Expensas extraordinarias are approved by the assembly for specific, non-recurring expenses: a project, a major repair, an unexpected cost not covered by the reserve fund. They are apportioned separately and do not form part of the annual ordinary budget.

The fondo de reserva is what keeps every breakdown from becoming an extraordinary charge. The law does not set a minimum percentage, but practice suggests at least 5% of ordinary expensas, and the assembly can decide a higher amount. The administrador manages that fund, but it can only be used for repairs and improvements that the assembly or the reglamento authorise, not to cover a management deficit.

Arrears on expensas are the problem every Argentine administrador names as the most frequent and most draining. The collection tool is the juicio ejecutivo — expedited enforcement: the debt certificate issued by the consorcio's administrador has executory force, which allows filing directly without first winning an ordinary lawsuit recognising the debt. That does not mean the process is fast — Civil Justice in Capital Federal and the provinces can take years — but it is at least the most direct route.

The right to collect each expensa lapses two years from its due date. Letting that deadline pass without acting is what makes uncollectable a debt that was enforceable, and it is one of the most common complaints current-paying owners make to the administrador when they learn the consorcio lost the ability to collect.

Before reaching the courts almost all the margin is in the operation: an account statement that arrives the same day each month, a reminder before the due date, and somewhere the owner can check their balance without having to call the administrador or stop by the front desk. Much of the arrears is not bad faith, it is disorganisation.

The asamblea ordinaria must meet at least once a year, within the first four months of the fiscal period, to approve the previous period's account and the next budget. Notice must be given at least ten days in advance, stating place, date, time and agenda. If there is no quorum at the first call — a majority of owners present — it moves to a second call half an hour later, and there the assembly sits validly with whatever owners are present, with no minimum.

Decisions are adopted by majority of those present, computed by each unit's percentage, except for amendments to the reglamento de copropiedad and works that constitute an innovation or a structural modification, which require two thirds of those present at first call or an absolute majority of owners at second call.

A badly convened assembly, without the required advance notice or without including in the notice a topic that was then voted on, can be challenged in court, and with it fall all the decisions it adopted. That is why care in the convocation and the minutes is not formalism: it is what gives validity to what is resolved.

Ask an administrador de consorcios in Buenos Aires, Córdoba or Rosario where the week goes and they almost never say «the reports». They say the phone.

The pattern repeats building by building: one WhatsApp group per consorcio where the administrador's announcement, a complaint about leaks, and the same question — what do I owe, when is the plumber coming, what do the bylaws say about pets — asked again by different owners all coexist, and somewhere in there the request that actually needed assembly approval, buried three screens up.

The cost is not only the administrador's time. It is that the consorcio keeps no record of anything. When the administrador changes, that history does not exist: what was requested, who requested it, whether it was resolved. And whoever arrives starts from zero, asking everything again.

Eloria handles that part and not the others: it is not an accounting system and does not replace your management software.

Owners write on WhatsApp, where they already are. Eloria answers from the consorcio's information — the reglamento de copropiedad, common-area hours, current notices — opens a case when a vendor or a council or assembly decision is needed, and escalates it to you. Everything is recorded per unit and per case, so the history survives a change of administrador.

It speaks the consorcio's vocabulary: expensas, propietarios, consejo de propietarios, encargado. Not a translation of what is said in Chile or Mexico.