Real Estate Spanish Law. The 10 year Insurance Policy to warranty the Structure, it is not a must when you are a self developer / builder, building your own family home.

CONSULTATION:

Dear Sirs,

We have recently developed and built a home for our family but do not know whether to contract the 10 year construction guarantee insurance or not. We have been told that being self promoters there is no need to have one. Will this be a problem if we decide to sell our property in the future?

 

 Dear reader,

 Thank you for your consultation

 Indeed, according to Law 28/1999 LOE all the new constructions built for living purposes should have 10 year guarantee construction insurance.
 

This law itself states that it will not be necessary to provide such guarantee for an individual self promoter building one family home for own personal and family use.

 Therefore this exception requires:

 1.) From a subjective point of view that the developer is an individual self promoter. This expression has been widely interpreted by the Spanish General Direction of Registries and Notaries considering as an individual a natural person(persona fisica), a corporate person (corporate body, company) (persona jurídica) or a group of people who built different properties and each of them will use one property as their family home.

 On the contrary it will not be understood as an individual when different people build one property or in those cases where the property is part of a community of owners subject to the horizontal property regime.

 

 2.) From an objective point of view it must be one single dwelling for the use of one single family, architecturally independent from any other houses and without common elements with other properties or housing overlays, etc. Multi housing complex will not be considered under this category.

 And it must be used by the self promoter, therefore any constructions to be used by third parties, for other uses than dwelling purposes, renting, professional activity etc are also excluded.

 In these cases, if you are self promoter for a single dwelling for your own use and did not contract the 10 year guarantee construction insurance when you built, then you should know that if you sell your property before the 10 years have elapsed, then the purchasing party will need to waive the 10 year guarantee construction insurance putting it in writing in the purchasing contract along with all the other conditions agreed on.

Should any reader be in this situation or similar please do not hesitate to contact us and the appropriate advice will be provided.

 The information provided in this article is not intended to be legal advice, but merely conveys general information related to legal issues.

 Carlos Baos (Lawyer)

Tel:34 966 426 185

E-mail: info@white-baos.com

https://www.white-baos.com/

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