Is the buyer entitled to cancel the purchase because the seller has changed the layout of a room, specifically the bedroom?
On the plan given to the buyer, no column appeared in the bedroom near the window. Later, the developer, following a new calculation by the architect directing the works, added a column; to avoid the unsightliness of leaving it exposed, a wardrobe has had to be relocated in that bedroom. The bedroom is therefore smaller.
Contracts normally state that “The sale is made with all the rights, uses, services and easements inherent in the urban property sold, and resulting from the Construction Project …”
This means that the parties, and especially the buyer, accept the changes that result from or are made to the construction project.
Even if the column did not appear in the basic project, the buyer accepts that there may be changes in the Construction Project (which the architect supplements and completes at the end of the works).
According to case law, in similar cases, even though the buyer may have had plans for that bedroom, this is indeed not an essential alteration of the property, nor one decisive enough to frustrate the purchase (because of the change in the property), since it affects the homes very little. This is all the more so considering that the change is far from a whim of the developer-seller, or even of the architect, because it responds to a requirement necessary for the safety of the structure, based on a precautionary judgement by the architect in the interests of the safety and protection of property and people.
Therefore, in our view, any legal action by the buyer against the seller or developer seeking to terminate the contract through the latter’s fault would not succeed.
Any questions?