Where does my property end?

In Ibiza, it happens that you are the owner of a property that is largely unregistered in the land registry or cadastral office.

Furthermore, in some cases it is unfortunately not possible to determine exactly where the boundary of a property is. The owners concerned only notice the problem when the property is sold or inherited. Many of these cases of unclear property boundaries and sizes end up in Spanish courts.

In Spain there is on the one hand the cadastral office, which is an authority located at the municipalities, whose main function is to determine all taxes concerning the property, especially the cadastral value. In the cadastral office plans of the properties are deposited, which give however only an approximate idea of the property areas. On the other hand, there is the Land Registry, which is intended to provide legal certainty when buying and selling real estate. In a number of cases, however, the size specifications in the cadastre and the land register do not correspond. In addition, neither the plans nor the size specifications in the plans are legally binding in the cadastral office. In the cadastral plans, the main buildings are listed together with the outbuildings such as garages and the swimming pool. However, the enumeration of the existing areas serves mainly to determine the tax level. The more square metres of living space built on the property, the more property taxes the municipality can charge the owner.

Nor can the owner rely on the fact that the details of his land plot are correctly recorded in the land registry. Although the notarial deeds of sale are forwarded to the Cadastre, it can take weeks before the change is made. If there is a change of ownership in the current year, the property tax receipt (IBI), which is usually payable in late summer, will still be in the name of the old owner.

There are also uncertainties at the land registry regarding the size and boundaries of the property. The property boundaries are often described with outdated details of the names of the property neighbours.

A new law “Ley Hipotecaria y del Catastro”, which came into force on 25 June 2015, is intended to remedy this situation. The data entered in the cadastral and land registry are to be compared. The new law enables the two institutions to exchange data in order to prevent conflicting information about one and the same property in the future. From now on, this should prevent a finca registered in both institutions from remaining without an exact identification of its boundaries, size and location. This legal innovation could be a big step forward for the legal determination of the location and size of properties in Spain.

However, the Association of Goemetriker Experts AEGEX (Asociacion Española de Geometras Expertos) is sceptical whether the new law will provide sufficient legal certainty. According to its president, the new law retains the old scheme of separation between cadastre, the various land registries, notaries and public administration. According to the president of AEGEX, the various institutions would continue to cooperate insufficiently, which would create a high degree of legal uncertainty. As an example, he cites the fact that the plans available to the cadastre are not the work of professional topographers. In practice, any plan submitted by a private individual could be included in the cadastral cartography.