According to the new Building Act, is the seller obliged to hand over the documentation to the buyer when selling the property?
In connection with the adoption of the new Building Act, the opinion has emerged that the seller does not have to hand over the project documentation to the buyer when selling the property.
While the old Building Act clearly stipulated this obligation, the new Building Act has omitted it from its text.
What does the Civil Code say? According to the legal regulation of the purchase contract, the seller is obliged to hand over to the buyer, in addition to the thing itself, the documents relating to it (§ 2087 CC). Which documents are involved may be determined in a particular case by the agreement of the parties, by commercial practice or by legal requirements.
The new Building Act stipulates (as did the old Building Act) that the owner of a building is obliged to keep certified documentation corresponding to its actual execution or a passport of the building throughout its duration.
From the combination of the above, it can be concluded that the seller is obliged to hand over the project documentation together with the object of purchase to the buyer.
The above provision of the Civil Code is dispositive and the contracting parties may negotiate the obligation in the contract as they wish.
If they do not agree in this way, the absence of project documentation or a passport is a legal defect and the buyer can claim rights from defective performance (for example, discounts on the purchase price corresponding to the price of the building passport).