Altering a flat in propiedad horizontal: what the meeting can authorise
You want to knock a wall through, enclose the balcony or change the window. What is yours and what belongs to the community of owners (even inside your own flat), what majority is needed, and why the meeting’s permission does not replace the building permit.
Gustavo Mejía Martínez5 min read
You want to knock a wall through to join the kitchen and the living room. Or enclose the balcony. Or swap the window for a bigger one. And somebody has told you to ask the building manager for permission.
In propiedad horizontal (the Colombian regime that splits a building into private units and property held in common), the answer has three layers, and skipping any turns out expensive: whether the element is yours or the community’s, what majority is needed if it is the community’s, and whether you also need a building permit. They are independent. Having one does not give you the others.
What is not yours, even inside your own flat
Here is the fact that surprises people most, and it sits in the legal definition itself:
The following shall be deemed essential common property: the land on or under which constructions or installations of basic public services exist, the foundations, the structure, the indispensable circulations […] the general installations of public services, the façades and the roofs or slabs serving as covering at any level.
Read it again: the structure, the façade and the slabs are common property even when they sit inside your flat. The column that gets in your way in the living room is not yours. The window opens onto the façade, and the façade is not yours either. Who pays for a repair is a different question, and the Who pays in a shared building tool works through it case by case.
| Element | Whose is it? |
|---|---|
| Columns, beams, structural walls | Essential common property |
| The façade and the windows that open onto it | Essential common property |
| Floor and ceiling slabs | Essential common property |
| Stacks and general service runs | Common property |
| Non-structural internal partitions | Private |
| Finishes, tiling, internal paintwork, fitted furniture | Private |
What you can do without asking anybody
Inside your own private unit, and without touching anything above: painting, changing floors, changing tiling, refitting the kitchen, changing internal doors, moving a non-structural partition.
With one limit the statute sets expressly: use the private unit "refraining from any act that compromises the safety or soundness of the building". And with a duty almost nobody knows about: to carry out at once the repairs in your own unit whose omission could harm the building, making good the damage caused by your neglect. The leak you do not fix, which then ruins the ceiling of the neighbour below, is yours.
When the general meeting is needed, and with what majority
The general rule is half plus one of the participation coefficients represented at the sitting. But some decisions call for a qualified majority, and that is where the commonest mistake sits:
The following decisions shall require a qualified majority of seventy per cent (70%) of the participation coefficients that make up the building or complex.
The ones that require that 70% and that tend to come up in an alteration: amending the propiedad horizontal by-laws, releasing a non-essential item of common property from that status, and imposing an extraordinary levy of more than four times the monthly service charge.
And one worth knowing because it protects the owner: no set of by-laws may demand more than 70%, save to extinguish the propiedad horizontal itself. Higher majorities appearing in by-laws "shall be deemed unwritten".
The expensive mistake: thinking permission replaces the permit
Enclosing a balcony, changing a window on the façade, joining two flats, opening a hole in a structural wall: these works call for two things at once, and they are cumulative.
- Authorisation from the general meeting, because it touches common property.
- A building permit, in whichever modality applies, because it is a work carried out on what is already built.
Neither substitutes for the other. Both cases turn up: the owner who takes out the permit and does not ask for authorisation (and the community requires the façade to be put back as it was), and the owner who gets the meeting’s permission and builds without a permit, exposed to a fine, to an order to demolish and to having the utilities cut off.
What to do, in order
- Get the propiedad horizontal by-laws and the drawings from the building permit. That is where it says what is common and what is private in your particular building.
- Find out whether the wall is structural. From the drawings, or from a professional. Not by tapping it.
- If it touches common property, ask for the authorisation in writing, with the minutes and the majority that applies.
- Check whether your work needs a permit. Plenty of refurbishments do, and the verbal enquiry at the curaduría (the private office licensed by the state to issue permits) is free.
- Tell the building manager before you start, even if you need no permission: rubble, working hours and use of the lifts are almost always regulated.
And a warning about method: the order matters. Applying for the permit before you hold the meeting’s authorisation means paying charges for something they may not let you do.
Sources
- Ley 675 de 2001, régimen de propiedad horizontal · Congreso de la República de Colombia · 3 August 2001
- Decreto 1077 de 2015, modalidades de licencia de construcción · Departamento Administrativo de la Función Pública · 26 May 2015
- Ley 400 de 1997, artículo 26: quién firma el diseño estructural · Ministerio de Ambiente, Vivienda y Desarrollo Territorial · 19 August 1997
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