What should you pay attention to when buying an apartment in a condominium? This is the question we are asking Charlie Cailloux, legal adviser for Particular to particular and the PAP.fr website.
franceinfo: What precautions should be taken?
Charlie Pebbles: When you buy a condominium, you buy private areas but also common areas. And you will have to participate in the renovation of these common areas. And so the visit to the apartment you are going to buy begins immediately as soon as you enter the hall of the building, you have to be attentive: the cracks, the faded paint, the threadbare carpet, the broken down elevator.
This can mean two things: either the co-ownership is badly administered and we can worry about everything that is not visible (the roof for example); or these works will soon be put on the agenda and it will be up to you to pay when you become the owner. Work on the common areas, these are major works that can add 5, 10, 15,000 euros per year to your share of the charge.
And precisely, how do you know if work is soon planned by the condominium?
You must ask the seller to provide you with at least the last 3 minutes of the general meeting, in which you will see if work is planned, has been voted on or is about to be carried out. You can also ask for the maintenance book of the building in which the syndic records all the work carried out in the co-ownership (it is in this document that you will have the year of the last facelift).
It is better to obtain these documents during the visit (in general, the sellers have them) but know that in any case, they will be given to you when signing the compromise. You must consult the energy performance diagnosis to find out if energy renovation work will be required in the short or medium term, which will be a headache.
Here’s to the work! Can we also talk about the charges?
Yes, the work is cyclical (a facelift is expensive, but it’s every 10 years). The charges are quarterly, it’s very regular. And that corresponds to the expenses necessary to run the building: water, electricity, collective heating if there is one, cleaning of common areas, syndic’s fees, caretaker’s salary, lift.
This information is very important, you must have it in mind before making an offer to purchase: in co-ownership, it is not enough to pay the price, you have to keep up the pace afterwards. Since 2014, the seller must inform the buyer about the financial health of the co-ownership (we often speak of dated pre-state), he informs about the unpaid status of the co-ownership charges: if the unpaid amounts represent more 20% of the budget, be careful, this is the sign of a fragile joint ownership which risks not being able to meet its obligations in the years to come.