We represent condominium owners, communities of owners and property developers – from creating condominium ownership to disputes at the meeting.
The Condominium Act 2002 (WEG 2002) forms the basis of the legal relationships within the community of owners and sets the framework for use and management. We help you secure your rights – in the city of Salzburg as much as in the districts, where second-home and holiday-flat questions come into play as well.
Our services in condominium law
- Creating condominium ownership: the condominium agreement, guidance through the entire process, registration in the land register (Grundbuch).
- Parification reports: preparation and review together with experienced experts, redetermination after structural alterations.
- Owner partnerships: particularities for spouses and partners, dissolution, procedure on death, precautionary agreements.
- Use and alteration: structural changes, letting, use of common parts, changes of designated use.
- Management: appointment and removal of the manager, review of the accounts, termination of the management contract.
- Owners' meetings: preparation, representation, adoption and challenge of resolutions.
- Maintenance and the reserve: distinguishing maintenance from improvement, building up and using the maintenance reserve, refurbishment projects.
Ordinary and extraordinary management
This distinction determines the required majorities and the available legal remedies. Ordinary management covers the ongoing measures to maintain the property – repairs, insurance, accounting, appointment of the manager. Extraordinary management concerns more far-reaching decisions such as major structural changes or changes of designated use; such resolutions can be reviewed by the courts under relaxed conditions. We classify what your case actually involves – the required majority and the applicable deadlines depend on that.
The owners' meeting is where decisions are made
Refurbishments, reserves and the appointment of the manager are decided at the meeting. Anyone not represented there is nonetheless bound by the resolutions. We prepare motions, represent you at the meeting and check afterwards whether notification, voting and content meet the statutory requirements. Where they do not, we bring the challenge within the deadline – and the deadlines are short.
Easier since the 2022 WEG amendment
Deemed consent has applied to certain alterations since 2022: for a charging point for an electric vehicle, a photovoltaic system on a terraced house, shading or a burglar-proof door, it is enough to notify the other owners in writing – anyone who does not object within two months is deemed to consent. Since the amendment, community resolutions can also be passed with a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, provided these represent at least one third of all co-ownership shares – refurbishments therefore no longer fail because of a silent majority. And the maintenance reserve now has a statutory minimum amount. These tools are still unknown in many communities; we put them to use.
Conflicts within the community
Typical points of dispute are the allocation of refurbishment costs, the use of common parts such as the garden, attic or parking space, noise, and questions of designated use in short-term letting. Such disputes burden the community lastingly, because its members continue to encounter one another. We therefore first seek a negotiated solution and conduct proceedings where none is reached – condominium matters fall to the district courts in non-contentious proceedings.
Early advice saves special payments
Whether buying an investment flat, creating condominium ownership in an existing apartment building or facing a major refurbishment: the course is set early. Talk to us before the resolution is passed or the contract signed.