GIPE Newsletter (Nº 24.161) May, 6th 2025

REAL ESTATE:

PROCEDURE FOR MERGING TWO O MORE PROPERTIES

If your neighbor has decided to sell the apartment adjacent to yours and you wish to acquire it to expand your home, you must follow a series of legal and administrative steps to merge both properties into one. This process requires obtaining the consent of the community of owners, a project prepared by an architect, and a building permit. Once the work is completed, it will be necessary to update the distribution of the shareholdings, register the resulting new property in the Property Registry, and apply for the corresponding modification in the Cadastre.

HOUSING LEASES:

NOW I NEED THE HOME FOR MYSELF

Two years ago, you signed a lease for a home, including a clause allowing you to repossess it if necessary. Now that your son wants to become independent, you are considering using the apartment for himself.

Is this possible?

The law contemplates this option as a right of the landlord to avoid contract extensions, provided that certain requirements are met:

• The landlord must be a natural person. This right does not apply if the landlord is a legal entity.
• The need to repossess the property must have been expressly provided for in the contract, indicating that it could be used as the habitual residence of the landlord or their relatives, and that this would occur before the minimum legal term of the five-year lease expires.
• When exercising this right, the landlord must adequately justify the reason for needing to repossess the property.

Regarding beneficiary relatives, the law only allows this right to be applied to first-degree relatives by blood or adoption (such as children or parents), or to the spouse in the event of separation, divorce, or annulment of marriage by final judgment.

If the tenant does not agree to leave the property voluntarily, the landlord must initiate judicial eviction proceedings due to necessity.

COMMUNITY OF OWNERS:

HOW TO WRITE THE AGENDA

Resolutions adopted at a homeowners’ meeting can be challenged if they do not adhere to the topics included in the agenda. Therefore, before the upcoming meeting, where intense debate is expected, it’s understandable that you might be concerned about how detailed the meeting notice should be.

It’s essential that the matters to be discussed are clearly specified in the notice. This guarantees the homeowners’ right to be informed in advance about the topics to be discussed, so they can assess whether it’s in their best interest to attend and participate in the decision-making process.

GIPE: Together we will be stronger