How long the builder remains liable for what is happening to you
Three sources, three types of cover and three different clocks. Structural stability runs to ten years; finishes, to one. And there is one case the regulations do not settle, which is said here rather than invented.
The builder’s liability period
Enter the handover date to see the periods.
Where it comes from
The three sources, which are not the same
Código Civil, art. 2060 no. 3: the building collapsing or threatening ruin, in whole or in part, through a defect in the construction, the ground or the materials, for ten years from handover. Ley 1480 de 2011, art. 8 (the consumer statute): stability of the work for ten years, and finishes for one. Ley 1796 de 2016, art. 8: financial loss where one of the situations in para. 3 of art. 2060 arises, for ten years from the Certificación Técnica de Ocupación.
Ley 1796 did not amend article 2060
It refers back to it, which is different. And its scope is not any building work: it is projects of five or more dwellings intended for third parties. A house commissioned by its own owner falls outside, and there the clock runs from handover.
And the receipt closes nothing
Paragraph 4 of art. 2060 says the owner’s receipt on completion only means they approve the work as outwardly in keeping with the plan and with good practice, and it does not release the builder from the ten-year liability. Having signed off the handover is not a waiver.
What this tool does not claim
A tool that answers what its source does not say is worse than no tool at all. This is what is deliberately left unanswered here, and why.
- Whether a leak is covered, this tool does not say, and that is not an omission: none of the three sources mentions the word «filtración» (leak) or the word «humedad» (damp). The text does not settle the ordinary case. It depends on what is proved about the damage and how a judge characterises it. Anyone who assures you otherwise, in either direction, goes beyond the texts.
- It does not say whether you will win. It says which sources are still live and until when, which is the question before that, and one worth being clear on before writing the first letter.
- It does not distinguish a consumer relationship from a contract between professionals. Ley 1480 is the consumer statute and whether it applies turns on that characterisation, which a form does not settle.
- It does not cover any contractual warranty your contract agreed above the statutory one, or insurance policies. Those live in the document, not in the law.
- It does not work out limitation or procedural time bars. A warranty still being live is not the same as the claim still being in time.
It is cracking. It leaks. Something is wrong.
A technical inspection to establish what is happening and why, before spending on repairs that do not address the cause. You get the diagnosis in writing, with the remedies and the order to do them in.