Statutes

1. Are statutes governing a condominium subject to registration or not?

Nowadays statutes join the arrival at Land Register of the foundational condominium title deed. Furthermore, both nearly always are contained in the same registration.

However, it might be possible that condominium without specific statutes were registered —so happened in condominiums registered formerly —.

2. Which statute clauses would you emphasise or consider more relevant?

Some examples:

• Those ones whereby the proprietors of flats and —mostly— premises are allowed to divide them physically creating others, under certain requirements commonly established in the statutes themselves.
• Those ones whereby the proprietors of a kind of parts of the building which share specific concerns, e.g. garages, are allowed to found a Sub-community among themselves.
• Those ones whereby a proprietor is allowed to separate or unlink the annexes from the main property, e.g. a garage from an apartment, as long as certain requirements are complied normally.
• Authorisations to change nature or destination of the piece or unit of the block.

3. In your LR system, if there was a statute clause or provision contrary to Law, should Land Registrars refuse registration thereof? If yes, provide an example. If not, explain briefly the reasons.

Land Registrars will refuse the registration in case of illegal clauses (although the rest of the clauses insofar as are valid or legal might be registered).

Some examples:

• Those clauses whereby the person or company (the first landlord) who founded the horizontal ownership on the building reserves for himself a right to raise one or more floors the height of the building when this becomes authorised by town planning in the future.
• Those ones whereby some of the first landlord is exempted to pay for common expenses related on those flats or premises that he hasn’t sold yet.
• Those ones whereby some of the owners is allowed to do works capable of altering communal elements or the way of using or enjoying these ones.
• Likely those which involve prohibitions or restrictions of selling imposed to the proprietors.

4. Formal publicity of statutes: What is the procedure to get LR information about statutes? How do interested parties look at the statute?

The rules and features of the procedure are not different from the common way of providing formal publicity. That’s why we invite to look to 1st fact sheet about Formal Publicity.

Any interested parties are entitled to request LR information about the statutes registered in the LR History of the building.

5. Particularly: if interested parties asked for LR information about an apartment, would information about condominium statutes also provided?

Ordinary information of an apartment by means of excerpts or extracts (notas simples) doesn’t include the content of the statutes. It’s a sort of information beyond what one can because is further than the status of property, ownership and burdens of the unit of the block.

In practice, information about statutes takes place following a specific request of the interested parties.