ᐅ Is it useful to hire a building inspector for a condominium purchased from a developer?

Sven1969 schrieb:

We recently completed the final inspection of our build with a developer based in Hamburg. If my wife hadn’t been visiting the construction site weekly, the privately owned areas would have been a complete disaster: wrong tile backsplashes, incorrect fixtures, window outlets forgotten, and so on. For the inspection of the private property, we hired an expensive building inspector (he wrote the book on final inspections), and he was worth every penny. He notices things that a layperson simply wouldn’t see.
For the inspection of the common property, we hired the same inspector for the homeowners’ association, with the same results.
I would NEVER buy from a developer again and NEVER accept the property without an inspector. Here you have a professional (developer) up against laypeople (buyers).

Thank you very much for your feedback. In the end, we also decided to engage a building consultant. So far, the developer’s site management and tradespeople have been of high quality, and the consultant only found minor issues. Nevertheless, the consultant was worth the cost, and we would do it exactly the same way again. You just sleep better at night...

Additionally, as you said, it allows you to meet on equal footing. We simply emailed the consultant’s interim report to the developer, and all the points were promptly addressed or are currently being planned.

Has the acceptance of the common property already taken place, or has the first owners' meeting been held? It is important that the community works together on this. It is also very beneficial to involve various experts (structural engineering / HVAC / electrical).

I would recommend the same to the community before the warranty period expires.

Kind regards

Muc1985 schrieb:

Has the acceptance of the common property already taken place, or the first owners’ association meeting? It’s important that the community works together on this. It is also very helpful to involve different experts (structural engineering / HVAC / electrical).

I would recommend the same to the community before the warranty period expires.

Best regards

Good tip – thanks! Our apartment is still under construction. Therefore, the final inspection of the apartment and the common property has not yet taken place. We have an expert currently involved in construction supervision, whose area of expertise is moisture damage (he is not qualified for electrical issues). How would it be best to organize a building acceptance with several experts? With companies like DEKRA and others, there usually is only ONE expert...

Also, we have not yet had a meeting of the owners’ association. I wonder about the usual timeline here: does the first owners’ association meeting typically take place before or after the acceptance of the common property? We don’t know the other apartment buyers yet.

The idea that defects are located in the common property is incomprehensible, illogical, and contradicts all experience. Now, the discussion revolves around how the individual unit owners are supposed to approve the common property. This is quite simple: the developer wants to receive approval immediately upon completion, and this approval for the common property is granted by the homeowners’ association manager without any action required from the unit owners.

The initial question of whether to have a construction supervisor for the individual units is equally easy to answer: quality on site never arises by itself, and certainly not just because it is stipulated in the contract, as some buyers believe. The longer the leash given to the contractors, the quicker defects will appear. This is consistently true even among professionals. A buyer of a condominium unit or a house built by a developer is, however, a professional, and therefore construction supervision makes sense if conducted by a qualified expert.

@Ludwig Werth In the past, the inspection of the common property was actually carried out by the property manager. However, this is no longer feasible. Nowadays, each individual owner must declare their acceptance directly to the developer.

@Muc1985 ..... thank you for your input; it seems we both are slightly off-center. It is clear that the partial owner cannot make legally binding declarations regarding the common property. The property manager appointed by the developer (who is often loyal to the developer) is not authorized to carry out the acceptance inspection, so in this case, the homeowners' association meeting must decide on a person to conduct the acceptance. If the initial management has already been authorized by the emerging homeowners' association, it is the responsibility of this property manager to accept the common property. This creates a gray area that, in my opinion, was not resolved by the 2013 Federal Court of Justice ruling: the developer can, after a minimal level of sales, call a homeowners' association meeting where a vote on the property manager takes place. Since the majority of votes still lie with the developer at this point (and may continue to do so in the future if sales stop), a property manager is effectively appointed who was chosen by the developer. This circumvents the contractual prohibition in the developer agreement as interpreted by the court yet achieves the same result.