Houses, beyond saving Milan: how to protect yourself if you buy a new construction

A solution for families who bought a house in one of the construction sites now blocked for the intervention of the judiciary a Milangiven that the parliamentary process of the so -called « Law Save Milan»It is in turn stopped and it is not known if it will ever resume, while the ordinary legal solutions do not appear practicable, as we have written here.

The fears of buyers on new buildings

There Milanese situation It is completely exceptional; Generally, the risk that the buyers of the houses under construction are not that of the blockade of the construction site by the judiciary, given that in principle when a construction site declares the details of the municipal authorizations under which it can start the works everything should be in order. In the specific case The authorizations were therethe trouble is that the judiciary believes that they could not be given in the mode used. But, regardless of the sad Milanese affair, the most frequent risk is that The buyer is homeless or anyway lose the money of the Acconti because the manufacturer fails, A possibility that in Milan is rather remote Because the demand for new houses is far superior to the offer and above all because the building areas in the city have very high prices and those who build have a lot to lose in case of bankruptcyfraudulent or not. In a small town where the ground costs little the risk of being faced with an improvised entrepreneur who « jumps » because he hurt the accounts is higher.

What to be careful when you buy

The Guarantees against failure They are provided for by the laws and must be applied compulsorily. But let’s see how they work, starting from a premise: before taking into consideration the purchase in the pipeline you need to precisely identify the promoter of the operation. These are neither the company that materially builds the property nor those who manage the negotiations and depend on the sale but those who own the land, of which the building under construction is a sort of appendix. This third figure is in fact the manufacturer And His failure would create trouble for buyers. Then certainly nothing prevents that the manufacturer or commercial structure can be controlled or connected to the promoter. The history of the manufacturer is the first guarantee of seriousness of the operation. Coming to the legal guarantees, we asked for lights to Milanese notary Filippo Salvowhich explains how the matter is governed by Legislative Decree 122/2005, further strengthened by Legislative Decree 14 of 2019, the « Code of business crisis ».

The guarantees provided for by law

There are three guarantees provided for by the combined of the two provisions. The first is the Transcription in public registers edited by a notary of purchase preliminary (the so -called « compromise »), made mandatory for the houses under construction by the 2019 decree. The transcription, unlike the simple registration that has an effect only between the parties, can be « opposable to third parties«  and has a « booking« making the credit of the buyer privileged if mortgages were transcribed on the property before the deed. The second is the obligation for the manufacturer to constitute, at a bank or an insurance, a surety on the accounts Riceututthe. In case of bankruptcy, the bank or insurance refund the promissory buyer for the sums paid until then. The cost of the surety is borne by the manufacturer and it would be necessary to stay away from the sellers who present the guarantee as optional or they ask for a price supplement.
Third guarantee is the so -called ten -year postum policyan insurance that covers the buyer for ten years with the risk of construction defects and damage deriving to third parties as a result of the defects.

The cases provided for the surety

When does the surety warranty take? The law indicates three conditions. The first is that it appears Transcription of a attachment and that the buyer decides to withdraw from the purchase. The second is that the manufacturer has incurred a situation like the failure, the extraordinary administration, the composition with creditors. In the event of business crisis or insolvency procedure, the buyer can perform the surety but the curator can ask for the suspension and take over in the preliminary. If you do not return in these two cases, you must get to the deed within the times provided by the transcribed preliminary and here the third hypothesis could be verified for which it is possible to ask to collect the sums guaranteed by the surety: The seller is unable to provide the ten -year postum policy, a situation that represents an almost certain clue of a building carried out not in a workmanlike manner.

The legal limits do not provide total protection

However, it should be emphasized that the legal guarantees serve to limit the damage but in themselves they may not be satisfactory, for example because the buyer could be busy in the sale of another home And he would still be forced to honor the contract or to dissolve it at a high price (typically, giving twice the deposit received). For this reason, the fundamental precaution is the one we recalled above: Make sure that you can trust the manufacturer.