Commonhold and freehold building elements.

We live in a quatro. The deed includes the partios, garden and roof. (solarium)

The Horizontal Property Act (HPA) Section 3 dercribes freehold (private) elements as those who are intended for the owners own use.

Felix Lopes has in his book "Commonhold Law in Spain" that this is the "cubic air space whithin the inner surface of the bundary walls ..."

According to this, the wall separating the four premises, the wall between the gardens and the wall between our garden and the steet, including the hut for water and electric meters, are commonhold property.

My problem is that my dear neigbour claims that half of the wall betwee us belongs to him and he can build whatever he wants on his part. The president and the Administrator claims that the wall is NOT a commonhold ownership and they can not do anything about it, not even when I refer to Section 7 in HPA as the neihbours arrangement totally block our sea view.

Is it a wall diving two properties?

M

The questions is "Who owns the three different walls?":

- the walls separating the four living "apartments" in the quatro

- the walls between our garden  and the neighbours gardens.

- the wall between our garden and the community steet, including the hut for water and electric meters,

Don't fully understand the set up as described (more me being thick than your description), but have you considered that it doesn't matter what the HPA says or what the neighbour/president/administrator says, before he "buiilds" anything, he should apply for permission from the town hall. if the propsed structure blocks your view, there's a good chance it's illegal anyway.

Its illegal for sure, but Town Hall says its within the building rules !?!?

The ground for my origional question was that our Administrator (who rules everything here) said that the wall is not a community matter and that  if the neighbour use half of the wall to block our view, it is a private matter!

I look forward to see what Maria says about this.

If any work fits the building rules the town hall can approve. However this does not mean that the proposed building is legal within the Community. The owner must have permission from the Community for the work, prior to the work. Deeds should show what is and is not Communal property. The trouble is there are 'grey' areas and i suspect this will be one of them!

This "grey areas" are building elements. Who is responsible e.g.  if the wall to the street needs maintenance ? Or if the wall between the gardens falls down?

 It all depends on year of building and the meeting of maintenance obligations.

There are cases of soon dterioration of buildings after completion, which are clearly a fault that needs to be covered by the Builder´s Insurance and ... there are cases of poor maintenance of old buildings.

Every case is different, but it is important to note that every builder has a legal obligation of hiring and paying an Insurance to cover building deffects during 10 years after the delivery of the building

Thanks Maria, but my question was: who owns this parts of the building?

Pools, streets, drains and common gardens as well as common stairs are owned by the Commonhold. Felix says that "cubic air space within the inner surface of the boundary walls ..." belongs to the individual owners. This means, that the wall between two apartments belongs to the Commonhold. Can this be applicable to our quatro as well? And who owns the walls between our gardens and who owns the wall between our garden and the commonhold street?

The other point is the guarantee. Maria wrote: "Every case is different, but it is important to note that every builder has a legal obligation of hiring and paying an Insurance to cover building deffects during 10 years after the delivery of the building"

This sounds nice on paper but we all know how the reality. We have no information of such a insurance and the builder says the 10 years guarantee is only for "infrastructure" and by that he means the pillars and the concrete floors.

And how do we get our right against a corrupted builder who know all the tricks? We take him to the court and wait 4 years and pay a lot and lose anyway!