When the developer is building an urbanization or block of flats, there will be in the horizontal division deeds a full description of all of the private properties to be sold.

In these deeds there will be a list of all the properties and all of them will have its description, size and quota coefficient.

Part of the description would be as “Commercial premises” “Apartment” “ Parking Place” “ Store room” etc.

 The problem arises when the owner who buy a property as a “ commercial premises” wants to use it as an apartment; when a “Store room” is run as a “commercial premises”; when a “Parking place” change into an “Store Room” or even when a “ Store room” becomes as an “Apartment”.

Our judges has been declaring that, unless there is a clear restriction in the deeds or the statutes of the community about the impossibility of changing the use of a private property, it will be considered that the owner can use it in the way he wants.

 Apart from the community act or the statutes of the community, the only limits for the use of a property would be the town hall rules or the nuisance that this use can cause to the rest of the neighbours.

In fact, the limits to the free right to change the use of a private property will have to be interpreted in a restricted way, so, as we said, unless the community act or the statutes specifically prohibit any change in the use of a property, the owner will be able to use it in a different manner without the consent of the community, with the only exception that this new use causes nuisance to the rest of the owners or it is clearly forbidden by the Town Hall´s rules.

This means that if the Town hall does not prohibit the change of a commercial premises into an apartment, the community will not be able to do anything against this change of use unless this is clearly affecting the rights of the rest of the owners or it is clearly forbidden in the community statutes. In the same way, if the owner uses an enclose parking place as a store room, this will not need the agreement of the community if there is no affecting the rights of the rest of the owners.

The consideration about when this new use is affecting the rest of the owners could be very open, and it will have to be decided by the court in every single case.