TOMASZ PRZYBECKI
24-04-2019

The Law on Premises Ownership – significant changes

Owners of four-location properties will make decisions regarding their properties in the form of resolutions. Until now, such an obligation for housing communities existed for buildings with at least eight units.

This sweeping change in real estate management, introducing numerous changes to the Law on Premises Ownership, among other things, is contained in the government’s draft law on the National Real Estate Asset.
The consequence of the regulation is that the provisions for at least four-flat buildings of the Apartment Ownership Act apply, rather than the relevant provisions of the Civil Code regarding joint ownership.

Residents of buildings with a minimum of four units will be required to appoint a one- or more-person board to manage the building. The said obligation does not apply to buildings with fewer than four units.

The form of decision-making by owners of a property with fewer than four units will be a unanimous resolution.

A potential problem of unanimous resolution-making is the possibility of the emergence of numerous disputes over real estate activities, namely repairs, property maintenance, or it represents the community, which has no organizational structure. The procedure for adopting resolutions, as well as for challenging them, was also not provided for the housing community.
It is worth noting that the housing community is not obliged to hold annual meetings to evaluate the functioning of the community.

Expanding the scope of the Premises Ownership Law to include buildings with a minimum of four units will result in the obligation to pass resolutions counted by a majority vote, and the larger the owner’s unit, the more important his vote will be. Each owner is entitled to challenge the resolution within six weeks of its adoption.