Who pays for the roof and the lift: shared building costs in four legal systems
Italy, Spain, England and New York compared on service charges and common expenses - the ground-floor owner and the lift, whether you can opt out, and why France, Germany and California answer this outside the civil code.
The problem
The roof needs replacing and the lift needs replacing, the bills are large, and one owner has decided not to pay. Sometimes the reason is that they live on the ground floor and never use the lift; sometimes it is that the work only benefits the other staircase; sometimes it is that the managing agent has spent far too much. This is the cluster where the seven jurisdictions diverge most sharply on where the answer even lives: three of them do not put it in the civil code at all, and the four that answer do so through four different mechanisms.
What they agree on
Where a general provision exists at all, the default is the same and it is not usage: cost follows share. Italy's art. 1123 divides the expense of preserving and enjoying the common parts, of services in the common interest and of majority-approved improvements 'in misura proporzionale al valore della proprieta di ciascuno' - by millesimi - 'salvo diversa convenzione'. New York's Real Property Law § 339-m says common expenses 'shall be charged to, the unit owners according to their respective common interests'. In both cases the starting figure is a percentage fixed in a document, not a calculation about who walks through which door.
All of them then close the obvious escape route, and they close it in the plainest language they use anywhere. Italy's art. 1118 provides that the owner 'non puo rinunziare al suo diritto sulle parti comuni' and 'non puo sottrarsi all'obbligo di contribuire alle spese per la conservazione delle parti comuni, neanche modificando la destinazione d'uso della propria unita immobiliare'. New York's § 339-x: 'No unit owner may exempt himself from liability for his common charges by waiver of the use or enjoyment of any of the common elements or by abandonment of his unit.' Italy's art. 1123 reinforces the point in its second paragraph by measuring the exceptional case not by actual use but by the use each owner 'puo farne' - can make of it. Not using the lift is not an argument in any of these systems.
And all of them separate the question of how much is spent from the question of how it is divided. The Italian and New York provisions govern allocation and say nothing about the size of the budget. The English sections govern the amount and say nothing about how it is apportioned between leaseholders, which is a matter for the lease. Spain's art. 395 governs the duty to contribute to conservation and leaves improvements to a different article. A reader who wants to attack a bill needs to know which of the two questions they are actually asking.
Where they part company
| Jurisdiction | What its law does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Italia | Italy is the only system in the whole comparison that legislates a formula for the argument people actually have. Art. 1124: stairs and lifts are maintained and replaced by the owners of the units 'a cui servono', and the cost is divided 'per meta in ragione del valore delle singole unita immobiliari e per l'altra meta esclusivamente in misura proporzionale all'altezza di ciascun piano dal suolo'. Half by value, half by height above ground - so the fourth floor pays more than the first, and the first still pays. | Nowhere else in the seven jurisdictions is there a statutory split for stairs and lifts. Elsewhere the ground-floor owner argues from general principle, or from the building's own documents; in Italy the answer is arithmetic. The final sentence of art. 1124 adds a detail that catches people out: for the value half, cellars, lofts, attics and roof terraces count as floors where they are not commonly owned, so an owner of nothing but a cellar contributes. |
| Italy also handles the partial-condominium case by operation of law. Art. 1123 third paragraph: where a building has more than one staircase, courtyard, roof terrace, work or installation serving only part of the building, the maintenance cost falls on the group of owners who derive benefit from it. | New York reaches a comparable result through § 339-m, which permits special allocation 'based on special or exclusive use or availability or exclusive control of particular units or common areas by particular unit owners' - but only 'if so authorized by the declaration and bylaws'. In Italy the rule applies of itself and an allocation that ignores it is open to challenge; in New York a board that wants to allocate by benefit must be able to point at the founding documents. Same outcome, opposite defaults. | |
| Italy's one permitted opt-out is narrow, technical, and still does not get you out of paying entirely. Art. 1118 allows an owner to disconnect from the centralised heating or air-conditioning system, but only where the disconnection produces no significant imbalance in its operation and no increased cost for the others - and the owner who disconnects remains liable for extraordinary maintenance, conservation and bringing the installation up to standard. | It is the mirror image of the Spanish escape clause. Spain lets you leave the ownership; Italy lets you leave one specific service, conditionally, and keeps you paying for its survival. There is no equivalent partial exit in the New York or English provisions. | |
| España | Spain is the only one that lets you buy your way out, and the price is the property. Art. 395 gives every co-owner the right to compel the others to contribute to the costs of conserving the common thing, and then: 'Solo podra eximirse de esta obligacion el que renuncie a la parte que le pertenece en el dominio.' Renouncing your share in the ownership is the sole exemption the text admits. | Italy's art. 1118 forbids exactly the act that Spain permits: the Italian co-owner may not renounce his right in the common parts at all. Same problem, opposite rules, in two codes that are otherwise close relatives. New York sits between them - § 339-x forbids waiver and abandonment, but allows an owner to stop charges 'thereafter accruing' by conveying the unit and the common interest to the board of managers on behalf of all the other owners, subject to the by-laws. A conveyance rather than a renunciation, and it does not clear arrears. |
| Spain's art. 395 is not condominium law. It sits in the general rules of the comunidad de bienes - undivided co-ownership of a single thing - and the Spanish page says in terms that it does not apply to the quotas of a comunidad de propietarios in a block of flats, which are governed by the separate Ley de Propiedad Horizontal. | The Spanish member therefore answers a different version of this problem: three siblings who inherited a house and one of them will not pay for the roof. It does not answer the block-of-flats version at all. This is worth saying rather than papering over, because a reader with a Spanish community of owners is reading the wrong article on this page and should be looking at the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal. | |
| United Kingdom | England changes the question. The occupier of an English flat is usually a long leaseholder paying a service charge to a landlord, not an owner paying a share to a body of co-owners, so the statutory control is not about apportionment at all - it is about the amount. Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 s. 19: relevant costs count towards a service charge 'only to the extent that they are reasonably incurred', and where incurred on services or works 'only if the services or works are of a reasonable standard', and 'the amount payable shall be limited accordingly'. Subsection (2) applies the same reasonableness limit to money demanded in advance, with adjustment once the costs are known. | No other member of this comparison contains a reasonableness test on what was spent. Italy, Spain and New York give the dissenting owner an argument about his share; England gives the leaseholder an argument about the bill itself - that the agent charged too much, or that the cleaning was not done to a reasonable standard. As the English page notes, reasonably incurred is not the same as cheapest, and the section limits what is payable rather than authorising a leaseholder to stop paying. |
| England adds a purely procedural cap that has no analogue anywhere else here. Under s. 20, where the section applies to qualifying works or a qualifying long-term agreement, each tenant's contribution is limited unless the consultation requirements were complied with or dispensed with by the tribunal. The limit bites regardless of whether the money was well spent. | A landlord can spend a perfectly reasonable sum on a genuinely necessary roof and still recover only a fraction of it, because he did not consult. Two independent controls therefore run in parallel in England - reasonableness under s. 19 and consultation under s. 20 - and satisfying one does not answer the other. What is striking about the text is what is missing from it: subsection (5) leaves the 'appropriate amount' that makes works qualifying to regulations made by the Secretary of State, and the consultation procedure itself - the notices, the observation periods, the estimates - is in regulations too, so the figures everybody quotes appear nowhere in the section. | |
| New York | New York's list of departures from proportionality is closed, and every item on it carries the same condition. § 339-m permits: insurance charged as § 339-bb provides; special allocation to one or more non-residential units; special allocation based on special or exclusive use, availability or exclusive control; and reduced, non-proportional or rate-capped charges for units subject to an income-limiting regulatory agreement with a government body, where necessary to keep combined common charges, mortgage and housing costs within thirty per cent of the income limit - with the existence and financial impact of such an allocation disclosed as a special risk in any offering plan. Each is available only 'where so authorized by the declaration and bylaws'. | This is the most explicit statement in the comparison of the principle that a board cannot invent fairness. A resolution is not enough; the authority has to be in the constitutional documents of the condominium. The Italian and Spanish provisions, by contrast, contain their own exceptions and do not condition them on any document - though art. 1123's opening rule is itself displaceable 'salvo diversa convenzione'. |
| New York is the only one that expressly rules out the set-off argument. § 339-x prohibits an owner exempting himself from liability for common charges, and the New York page explains that this is read as excluding the withholding of charges as leverage over a board that has failed at something: the complaint about the board survives, but it does not license non-payment. | The English scheme runs the other way on this point, because s. 19 operates on what is payable in the first place - a leaseholder who successfully argues that a cost was unreasonably incurred was never liable for that part. In New York the charge is due and the grievance is a separate matter; in England the grievance can reduce the charge. |
The provision in each country
Each card links to the page that reproduces the official text and explains it in that country's own language.
Italia Codice Civile
- Art. 1118 Codice Civile Each owner's right in the common parts is proportional to the value of his unit, he may not renounce that right, and he may not escape the cost of conserving the common parts even by changing what his unit is used for.
- Art. 1123 Codice Civile Three criteria in one article: costs by share of value as the default, by the use each owner is able to make of a thing that serves them unequally, and on the group benefited where a staircase, courtyard or installation serves only part of the building.
- Art. 1124 Codice Civile Stairs and lifts are maintained and replaced by the owners they serve, with the cost split half by unit value and half in proportion to the height of each floor above ground - cellars, lofts and roof terraces counting as floors for the value half.
España Código Civil
United Kingdom Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
- LTA 1985 s. 19 Service charge costs count only so far as reasonably incurred and, for works and services, only if of a reasonable standard; money demanded in advance is payable only up to what is reasonable, with adjustment afterwards.
- LTA 1985 s. 20 Each leaseholder's contribution to qualifying works or a qualifying long-term agreement is capped unless the consultation requirements were met or dispensed with by the tribunal - with the threshold figures and the procedure left to regulations.
New York Real Property Law
- N.Y. Real Property Law § 339-m Common expenses are charged to unit owners according to their common interests, with a closed list of permitted special allocations, each of which requires authorisation in the declaration and by-laws.
- N.Y. Real Property Law § 339-x No owner may escape common charges by waiving the use of the common elements or abandoning the unit; the only exit is conveying the unit and common interest to the board, and it stops only charges accruing afterwards.
Where there is no answer in the code
A jurisdiction listed here is a finding, not a gap. Either its answer lives outside the corpus — special legislation, case law, municipal rules — or its law simply has no such rule.
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France
In law we don't carry
Loi du 10 juillet 1965
The textbook case of an answer living outside the code. French co-ownership of a building is the loi n. 65-557 of 10 July 1965, a free-standing statute; the Code civil says nothing about a syndicat de coproprietaires, a reglement de copropriete or a repartition of charges. A lookup across the whole Code civil returned no article with a page - correctly, because there is nothing there to return.
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Deutschland
In law we don't carry
Wohnungseigentumsgesetz
The same, and less widely known outside Germany: German condominium is the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, not the BGB. The lookup did return §§ 741 and 745 on the Bruchteilsgemeinschaft, which look plausible to a non-specialist and are the wrong body of law - a fractional community of co-owners is not Wohnungseigentum, and the WEG has its own rules on Kostenverteilung and Beschlusskompetenz. Both are left out rather than published as a false equivalent.
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California
In law we don't carry
Davis-Stirling Act
California common-interest developments are governed by the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act, Civil Code §§ 4000 and following, which has no pages in this corpus. The lookup offered §§ 1430-1432 and 1468, none of which is a page and none of which is the operative law for an HOA assessment.
That's the law in seven places. Now let's settle your problem.
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This page compares provisions of several legal systems in general terms and links to the official text of each. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you which country's law governs your situation, and it takes no account of the circumstances of your case. For a live dispute, consult a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.