PPE: who should pay for the shutters?

PPE: who should pay for the shutters?

"How should the costs of repairing or replacing some of the shutters in a condominium be apportioned? Should they be paid for by the condominium, or should each condominium owner be responsible for his or her own costs? Would it be possible to replace some of the wooden shutters with metal shutters or blinds, as long as they are the same colour?

Gilbert, Petit-Lancy

Condominium ownership (PPE) is a special form of ownership in that each co-owner has the exclusive right to use and develop certain parts of the building, provided that in doing so he or she does not hinder the use or restrict the exercise of the rights of the other co-owners.

Each co-owner owns a share or fraction of the building, expressed in thousandths. This fraction plays an extremely important role, since voting rights and the allocation of common costs and charges vary according to the fraction in question.

The Civil Code lays down a number of rules governing relations between co-owners, unless otherwise provided for in the rules of the PPE, to which reference should be made as a matter of priority. If the rules of the PPE do not provide for anything specific, the common costs and charges must be shared between all the co-owners in proportion to the value of their shares (article 712 h CC).

The law also provides a non-exhaustive list of what must be considered as common charges and costs. Exterior elements, in this case shutters, are part of the common property. The charges and costs arising from them are therefore the responsibility of the community of co-owners and must be distributed among the owners in the same way as all other charges, in proportion to their respective shares.

However, if certain parts of the building or installations are of little or no use to certain co-owners, article 712 h of the Civil Code stipulates that this must be taken into account when apportioning costs. The case law specifies that this exception is to be interpreted restrictively and from a strictly objective point of view: this examination must lead to the finding that only one of the co-owners derives a definite advantage from a part of the installation and makes increased use of it for the related costs to be charged to him alone.

With regard to the possibility of replacing wooden shutters with metal shutters, a co-owner is not authorised to decide alone to change the external appearance of the building; if you wish to make changes to the exterior of the building, and provided that your local authority's building and planning regulations allow it, you will need the unanimous agreement of the co-owners.