One of the most important decisions in anyone's life is buying a home, in which several factors come into play, although not always in this order: location, price and surface area. It is common for buyers to value the price of two different new-build homes close to each other, but not realize, because they are unaware, that real estate developers measure the houses in different ways, without a common criterion, which determines that the price is higher or lower. This leads to a lack of transparency and confusion for customers. According to Carlos Heijnen, Product and Innovation Director at Habitat Inmobiliaria, «previously, customers visualized the size of a home in terms of the number of bedrooms, but in recent years this parameter has changed a lot because the surfaces have been adjusted.» The problem arises, according to this expert, because the same home can measure more or less depending on the criterion used. A flat with 100 square metres of usable interior space and a 25 square metre terrace can be advertised as a 100-square-metre flat with a terrace or a 125-square-metre flat. Clients choose the latter, thinking that they are buying more surface area for the same price, although this is not necessarily the case. This lack of homogenisation in measurement means that developers have to explain the different surface areas to their clients, “but they do not always understand this situation or go into the detail of the breakdown of the measurements,” says Heijnen. The debate comes when determining “what square meters of common areas of the building are added to the closed surface of the dwelling, to establish the value that usually appears in commercial documents,” argues Gonzalo Echarri, partner of Ortiz León Arquitectos and spokesperson for the Technological Platform for Building work group, responsible for establishing a common measurement for all developers and agents in the sector. Thus, the entrances, elevators, floor lobbies, garbage rooms or the building's facilities are common surfaces that are prorated among the dwellings. However, there is a frequent doubt: are the common surfaces below ground level added to the floors? The criterion of the platform's work group is that the surfaces of installations located below ground level that serve the dwellings do form part of the constructed surface of these. For example, the geothermal room that provides heating and domestic hot water (DHW). On the other hand, the ventilation installation room of the garage does not. It is also important to distinguish between useful and constructed surface. The first corresponds to the walkable areas inside the house measured between partitions, which includes the inside of the cupboards. Meanwhile, the built surface includes the partitions and the walls of the façade with all their thickness. The problem is different when the house is second hand. In this case, it is more difficult to establish a surface because, in many cases, there is no complete information on the entire building. You have to use the surfaces that appear in the Property Registry, Cadastre or the deeds of sale, even if you are not sure if they are correct or not. This is not a minor issue, since depending on the number of square meters that appear in these bodies, the community fee that the owner has to pay each month can vary. «It is very common that there is no coordination between the Property Registry and the Cadastre because the latter has not informed the former. This situation is recorded in the simple note of the property when it reflects that no cadastral reference is recorded or the property is not graphically coordinated with the Cadastre”, says Patricia Briones, a lawyer specialising in horizontal property matters. If the coefficients assigned to each of the dwellings in a building that appear in the Cadastre coincide with those that appear in the Property Registry, there is no problem at all. Conflicts arise when they do not correspond and only those that appear in the Cadastre are taken as a reference, which the owners can access more easily because they are also free, without checking whether or not they coincide with those in the Registry. This lack of coordination can impact the coffers of the communities of owners, since the participation in the payment of expenses is based on the participation quota assigned to each property and that appears in the Property Registry. It is also taken into account when voting in a neighbourhood meeting, where this participation quota is applicable. According to Briones, “in order to provide legal security to both the agreements adopted and to properly distribute the expenses among the owners, the coefficients of the properties that appear in the Property Registry must always be taken into account.”
Communicate the works
Although there are various reasons why the coefficients that appear in the Property Register and the Cadastre do not match, it is common that this is because, after the building has been built and the coefficients assigned and registered in the Register have been set, work is carried out on the common elements or on the homes themselves. And the execution of these works has as a direct consequence the increase in the value of the property. “The works must be communicated to the Cadastre so that it can proceed, in turn, to the cadastral revaluation of each of the properties and, consequently, to modify its original coefficient,” Briones concludes. The Technological Platform for Building is working, under the umbrella of the Association of Real Estate Developers of Madrid, on a manual that establishes a criterion of good practices in the communication of the surfaces of the homes so that all agents measure the same. “This will benefit future owners, who will be able to compare apples with apples; the developers, who will market the homes with the same criteria; to architects, who will not have to measure in different ways depending on the client; and to appraisers,” concludes Heijnen. Follow all the information on Economy and Business on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter