Apartments, complexes and shared pools: the building regulation, the community fees, and what 'maintained' means

Most of the new homes sold to foreigners on the north coast are not houses; they are pieces of something. An apartment over the coast road, a villa in a gated complex, a townhouse with a share of a pool that eleven other households also think of as theirs. The listing sells the pool; the deed sells you a fraction of it, with a fraction of the bills and a fraction of the vote, under a document you have probably not read. This article is about that document and the arithmetic under it.

I am not a lawyer. The rules are the Greek law of horizontal ownership, nearly a century old and under reform in 2026; the practice is the complexes along the coast I grew up beside.

Horizontal ownership, in plain words

Greek law lets a building be divided into separately owned units — horizontal properties — each of which carries a share of the land and of everything that is not inside a unit: the structure, the roof, the stairs, the paths, the gardens, the pool, the pumps. The share is expressed in thousandths and written into the deed of division that created the units, and into your own title. Those thousandths are the constitution of the place: they decide how many votes you have at the owners’ meeting and what fraction of every common bill is yours, and they cannot be changed without everyone’s agreement. A complex of villas around a pool is, legally, the same thing as a block of flats, however detached the houses look.

The regulation

Alongside the deed of division sits the building regulation — a notarised document that sets out what the common parts are, how costs are split, what an owner may and may not do, how the meeting is called and what majorities it needs, and who manages. It binds every owner from the day they buy, which is why it should be read before the deposit and not after the first meeting. Regulations commonly forbid external alterations, awnings and colours that break the look, commercial use, sometimes pets, and — in complexes built or rewritten in the last few years — short-term letting, because developers have learned that a pool full of changing guests is a complaint generator.

Where the regulation is silent on short lets the question has been argued in the courts for years and the 2026 reform was expected to settle who decides and by what majority. Until it is law, the honest answer is: read the document, ask the lawyer, and if the plan depends on letting, do not buy a unit whose regulation can be read either way. The article on renting out covers the state’s rules; the regulation is the private rule on top.

The fees

There is no standard community fee; there is the cost of running the place, split by thousandths. A block with a lift, a cleaner and stairwell lighting runs a few dozen euros a month per apartment. A gated complex with gardens, irrigation, outdoor lighting, a caretaker, security and a shared pool runs several hundred, and the pool is the reason: chemicals, pumps, daily cleaning in season, the attendant that the health rules may require when the pool serves short-term guests, the liner and the filtration every decade. Then the reserve fund, if there is one, for the roof and the paint; and the fact that empty units pay their share whether anyone is there, which in a complex of holiday homes is most of them most of the year.

Before you buy, ask for the last two years’ accounts, the reserve fund balance, the current budget, the manager’s contract, and the list of owners in arrears — because the non-payers’ share does not vanish, it waits, and the 2026 bill was partly about that. A complex where a third of the owners are behind is a complex where the pool turns green in July.

The meeting, and who actually decides

Decisions are taken at the owners’ meeting by the majorities the regulation sets, counted in thousandths. Under the old law, anything beyond routine needed large majorities or unanimity, which is why so many buildings could not agree to fix a roof; the 2026 bill proposed simple majorities for repairs, maintenance and energy upgrades and easier changes to the regulation itself. In a complex of holiday homes the practical problem is attendance: owners in five countries, a meeting in Greek in February, proxies that nobody collected. The manager — an owner, or a company — ends up deciding by default. Find out who that is and whether the developer still is.

New complexes, and the developer who stays

On a new complex the developer usually writes the regulation, sets the thousandths, appoints the first manager and sometimes keeps unsold units and therefore votes. That is normal and worth understanding before completion: the regulation is drafted for the developer’s convenience as much as yours, and the article on buying off-plan is the place the questions go. The common parts also need to have been delivered and permitted — a pool that exists on the brochure and not on the permit is an illegal construction that all the owners own a share of.

The honest downside

You are buying a share of other people’s decisions. The regulation can forbid the thing you bought the place to do. The fees are set by a budget you will vote on from abroad and paid whether you come or not. The pool is a joy for the six weeks you are here and a cost centre for the other forty-six, and it is the first thing that fails when the arrears pile up. And the law that governs all of it was written in 1929, was being rewritten in 2026, and will produce a decade of arguments about what the new majorities mean. A well-run complex is a genuinely easy way to own in Crete; a badly run one is a committee you cannot resign from.