Towards the building amnesty: litigation risk for common areas

At the meetings convened at the Ministry of Infrastructure on the Housing Plan, the absence of the condominium administrators' associations was conspicuous, though not the only one. The sanction being studied by the ministry aims, this seems certain, to act mainly on certain typical situations and will concern exclusively irregularities inside homes. Ultimately, however, there may also be an impact on common areas. We will only find out when the details of the upcoming novelties are made known, in the meantime we record the comments of the property owners, who were present at the ministerial table among the 50 organisations invited to participate in the three meetings held in recent months.

"Minister Salvini has kept his promises. This is not an amnesty, but a series of regulations to regularise internal discrepancies in housing. Common-sense measures that the sector has been calling for for some time and that serve to unblock the market and provide transparency," Confedilizia president Giorgio Spaziani Testa explained in an interview today. Relaunching buying and selling is therefore the positive aspect that Confedilizia and others emphasise. Today the promising seller-builder is bound to build a property unit that conforms to the one proposed for sale and resulting from the plan attached to the preliminary. The realisation of a different property, if not justified by force majeure, identifies a breach on his part, the seriousness of which will have to be assessed, but in the final analysis, if the non-conformity is serious it may lead to a termination of the contract, if it is slight it may lead to a reduction in the price. Remedy, therefore, undoubtedly simplifies the procedure.

At that table, however, as mentioned, were also the small owners. Contacted by us, the national president of the Appc (Association of Small Homeowners) Vincenzo Vecchio explains: "We took careful note of the indications provided by the minister on what was supposed to be a Home Plan. The data on the so-called 'small irregularities' that should affect some tens of millions of homes in the amnesty/condon are generic and at present there is no precise territorial survey. Moreover, it is necessary to translate into simple and clear rules a measure that, if it repeats what happened in the past, risks opening many disputes'.

Why? "If the intention is to simplify regularisation procedures by overcoming bureaucratic obstacles, but respecting the need for safety and respect for architectural decorum, the new provisions are welcome. What must be avoided is the issuing of provisions only for the sake of cash, as has been done in the past. We await the complete regulatory texts, reserving an overall assessment only after having carefully analysed them. However, we cannot fail to point out that a mini amnesty cannot be confused with a Fanfani-style house plan that Appc has been proposing for some time. We also believe that for the irregularities of the common parts of the condominium, paragraph 1 of Article 1135 on the establishment of the mandatory fund should be amended.

For Confabitare at the ministerial table were national president Alberto Zanni and national secretary Eugenio Romey. The reaction to the novelties in the pipeline was positive. "The proposals are aimed at regularising the discrepancies and structural irregularities that afflict 80% of Italy's real estate assets, with the main objective of simplifying administrative procedures and protecting small property owners as well as reducing the workload of municipal technical offices," Zanni comments. "Undoubtedly a courageous measure, which will see the usual people shouting scandal, without delving into the real scope of the decree planned for the end of the month, which instead aims to resolve atavistic bottlenecks caused by the overlapping of uncoordinated regulations, often surreal situations that need to be overcome. On the other hand, it should be explained to citizens why in some municipalities there is a backlog of amnesties unworthy of a civilised country. I am thinking of Rome, with around 170,000 dossiers still waiting to be processed,' Romey concludes.