Dear all,

I own a beach apartment in Marbella and visit it around 10 times a year. I worry about it when I am not there as I have been broken into once this year. Nothing of any real value was stolen but it was very upsetting to arrive to see my apartment turned upside down. The urbanization is very nice but mostly empty outside of the summer months. While it has day-time security, there are no cameras throughout the community and the other owners do not want to install them as they mostly only use the apartments in the July and August months and see it as another expense. I should mention that I have an alarm system but this seems to be pretty pointless as the block is almost empty and no one seems to hear it when it goes off!

I speak fluent Spanish and have spoken to the President of the community about this on various occasions but as he does not live in the urbanization all year he says that he can?t do much about it. It is very frustrating as there is a general lack of communication between the owners of the community and I know that other people have also been robbed in the community, but as we are all rarely there at the same time we never get to actually talk about. We have a v.g notice board in our community but that is not very helpful when the urbanization is practically empty most of the year and no one gets to see it!!

I would really appreciate it if anyone could suggest a way of better communication between neighbours (most live in different parts of Spain and England), kind of like a Neighbourhood Scheme. I have thought of going to a website company to ask them to design a webpage for us so that we could stay in contact with eachother. The only thing that scares me about this option is the cost and the maintenance involved as I don?t want to get roped into looking after it!!!

I am open to all suggestions!
Thanks for your help, Chloe

One idea to improve your security is to change your alarm, to one that you can get SIM or Phone connected, and then take out contract with a local security company who in the event of an alarm will be phoned and who will respond to the alarm in a reasonable time, ( IE Not the big firms who have a central call centre in Madrid or the like, as it will take forever to get a guard to follow it up), Once you hve the signs put up showing you are connected to a quick response security team, this may help,

As for internet option, A webpage for this type of thing could be on a forum like this, just ask the owners if they will give you a section with Password access and entitle it, xxxx urbo information page. then the owners on your urbo could register on the site, get the password and all message could be posted as this one is, and of course you also have access to the PM process between individuals.

This kind of thing was quite common on say Motor sport site with sections for specific type owners, IE JAG MK1 owners page etc, I know there is one on this site for the Santa Anna urbanisation which was put on the site for a similar purpose

http://www.spainserve.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,31/