First registration in the Land Registry

“…within 10 working days you must remedy the defects…”

If you have handled a good number of habitability certificate applications, you have very probably received a letter from the Generalitat’s housing department saying:

“You must provide a photocopy of the first registration in the Land Registry showing the unit for which you are applying for the certificate, or a literal certification of the declaration of new construction and horizontal division of the building to which the property belongs.”

And if you keep reading:

“In accordance with article 71 of the Law on the Legal Regime of Public Administrations and the Common Administrative Procedure, within 10 working days of receiving this notice you must remedy the defects or provide the documents requested; otherwise, the application will be filed without further processing.”

Breathe in, breathe out and relax, those of you whose backs have already adapted to the seats of the housing department on Carrer Aragó 244.

The certificate of new construction (in this case, for an existing building) is a certificate signed by an architect or competent technician stating that the house was built on a specific date and describing the general data of the home: built area per floor and in total, plot area and building footprint. In many cases notaries draft these documents and the technicians limit themselves to checking their accuracy and signing them.

The first registration is the document with which the unit (the home within the horizontal division, not the whole property) was entered in the Land Registry for the first time. You have to request it from the corresponding Land Registry; the deeds of sale usually state in which registry, book, volume, etc. the first registration was made.

The simplest way to remedy the “deficiencies or defects” in the application is to obtain the “first registration” from the Land Registry, as it costs much less than the certificate of new construction and in most cases is quicker.

Why does the department ask for this documentation? Simply because the home is older than 1984 and does not appear in its records. For that reason, and to make sure that the home was not built illegally after 1984.