One of the innovations to the Salva-Casa decree, DL 69/2024 converted with L. 105/2024, is that of having distinguish the verification of legitimacy between common elements of a condominium building and individual real estate units.
This, in the opinion of the writer, entails some implicit inconsistencies which we need to reflect on before we can operate with serenity.
Conformity of common areas and conformity of private real estate units
With the conversion of the decree into law it was added a new paragraphthe1 ter, to art. 9 bis DPR 380/01which specifies that when operating on individual real estate units, any non-conformities of the common areas should not be consideredand vice versa, that is when working on common areas (e.g. restoration of facades, arrangement of stairwells in condominium buildings) they do not detect any non-conformities of individual private real estate units.
This specification, introduced for simplify compliance assessment procedures when you have a partial assignment given either by the individual condominium owner or by the condominium but to carry out work only on the common areas, it necessarily ends up also have an impact on construction tolerancesoffering, as will be said, also some inconsistencies that must be taken into account by the technician.
Common parts and new tolerances
First of all it must be said that the New features introduced in construction tolerancesnot only with the decree and with its conversion into law, they have not it has never been clarified in the strict sense what is meant by real estate unit but, above all, they do not have never defined how the principle of tolerances should be applied to surfaces that can only be forcibly assimilated to individual unitssuch as common surfaces of the building such as facades, or common spaces such as entrance halls, stairwells, corridors, cellars.
If, in fact, it is all in all clear how to define the real estate unit even in the absence of its official boundaries, it is more complex to understand how to operate on the common areas without violating the canons of the lawThe writer does not have the answer to the question but it is considered useful to provide a basis for reflection that can help the technician in the approach to have in these contexts.
Practical examples
Of course, the simplest case is the one in which the technician receives the assignment for the complete regularization of the buildingthat is to say common areas and private areas at the same time: this remains the simplest way to operate, at least in terms of simplicity of interpretation, since simultaneously regularising private units and common spaces presents fewer interpretative difficulties, if only because it reflects the operating mode that already existed before the decree was issued.
If, however, you are only commissioned by the condominium to carry out a inspection limited to common areaswe collide with theobjective difficulty in identifying a “real estate unit” to which to refer the design measures on which the concept of construction tolerance is based. It should be remembered here that art. 34 bis paragraph 1, which has not been modified by the Salva-Casa decree, indicates that the construction tolerances to be verified if within 2% must always be referred to the measurements of the real estate unit to which they refer. At this point, the problem of which real estate unit should the dimensions be referred to when working on portions that simultaneously belong to multiple units?: on the one hand, it would seem that the measurements should refer to the façade as a whole, but this would conflict with the precise regulatory provision which expressly requires that the measurements should refer to the individual real estate unit.
It therefore seems necessary to suggest that the verification of the common parts should in any case be referred to the dimensions of the real estate unit to which those parts are structurally related: in this sense therefore the facade should be divided into many small portions each corresponding to the real estate unit to which it refers in projection, and the tolerances, therefore, can be verified not at a fixed 2% but with the percentage corresponding to the surface area of the property. This, however, still implies the need to take into consideration the individual real estate units, not so much in the specific verification of conformity but at least limited to the net surface area measurement in order to determine the correct percentage of tolerance to applyor refer to the measurements of the project real estate units.
As regards the internal common areassuch as the entrance hall and the stairwell, there seems to be a lack of a reference to understand how to define them for the purposes of determining the correct reference percentage, since the common parts cannot be classified as real estate units. At this point one might think that on such surfaces it is possible to apply the “standard” percentage of 2%but always with specific attention to what is the surface or the dimension of reference to determine this deviation: one might think that the best way to operate on these spaces is to determine their surface as if they were real estate units, and therefore refer to these dimensions. The important thing, also in this case, is operate with diligence and consistency and, above all, explain well in the graphs and technical reports accompanying the building permits the method and criteria that the technician used to develop the considerations underlying the statements.
