The time limits in the LOE are neither limitation periods nor expiry periods, but guarantee periods.
On 3 December 2025, Court of First Instance and Preliminary Investigation no. 4 of Leganés notified us of a new judgment in favour of our clients, a homeowners’ association in a new-build residential development handed over just a few years ago.
Despite the short time that had elapsed, the residential development suffered from the following: in the communal areas, damp and water ingress in the garage, water ingress through the ventilated air gap, defective installation of the metal fence and defective construction of the green areas; in the homes, water ingress, drainage odours inside the homes, hairline cracks in walls, lifting floor tiles, defective installation of the timber and metal joinery, unsealed glazing on terraces and leaking radiators; and in the storage rooms, condensation.
Once we had sued those we considered liable for this damage, a well-known building contractor and the quantity surveyor acting as site manager, the defendants argued that the action was time-barred because one year had passed since the homes were handed over, that the defects were supposedly all defects in finishes, that the homeowners’ association had missed the deadline to claim, and that the limitation defence should therefore be upheld without ruling on the merits of the case.
Firstly, the defects being claimed directly affected the habitability requirements of article 3.1.c) of the LOE, and therefore had a 3-year guarantee period for claiming them, under article 17.1 b) of the LOE.
Secondly, once that right of action had arisen, because the defects had become apparent within the guarantee period, there was a 2-year limitation period for bringing it, under article 18 of the LOE. In that respect, we considered that the homeowners’ association had brought its action well within the time limit.
On this matter, Court of First Instance and Preliminary Investigation no. 4 of Leganés ruled as follows in its judgment:
With regard to the interpretation of these provisions, the case law is consistent, including, among many others, the judgments of the Civil Division of the Supreme Court of 7 October 2024, 25 July 2023, 14 September 2021, 11 March 2020, 15 January 2020, 29 January 2014 and 19 July 2010, which state that the period established in the first paragraph of the aforementioned article 17 of the LOE is neither a limitation period nor an expiry period, but a guarantee period, in the sense that, for the liability action established by that provision to arise, the ruin of the construction must occur or the building defect must become apparent within the periods set out in that article, counting from the completion of the works, so that if the period elapses without the event having occurred, the action can no longer arise, as the guarantee period has lapsed; whereas, once the action has arisen, because the event has occurred or become apparent within that period, the limitation period is the one set out in article 18 of the LOE.
(…) it follows that all the building defects affecting the habitability of the building in question have been present since at least 14 December 2023 and remained at least until 6 June 2024, the lawsuit giving rise to these proceedings having been filed on 8 January 2025, so we would be within the three-year guarantee period provided for in section b) of article 17.1 of the LOE, and the lawsuit was filed within the two years for bringing the action under article 18 of the LOE; for all these reasons, it cannot be upheld that the action brought by the claimant is time-barred with respect to any of the co-defendants, all without prejudice to the successive interruptions of the limitation period by means of the out-of-court claims sent to the co-defendant building contractor and the co-defendant technical architect, as shown by the documents submitted with the lawsuit as numbers seven to eleven, which amount to out-of-court formal demands to them to remedy the construction defects that are the subject of these proceedings.
Consequently, Court no. 4 of Leganés dismissed the pleas of limitation and expiry and upheld our claim in full, ordering both the building contractor and the technical architect, JOINTLY AND SEVERALLY, to compensate the homeowners’ association with the amount estimated by the DPCON expert, €163,881.34, to which must be added statutory interest from the date the lawsuit was filed and statutory interest increased by two percentage points from the date of the judgment until payment in full, together with the legal costs incurred by the claimant homeowners’ association at this instance.
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