A good three years ago, the law on home ownership was fundamentally reformed in order to reduce blockages within homeowners’ associations and to make modernization easier. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has now decided that individual owners can generally implement structural measures to make the facility barrier-free even against the will of the community – albeit at their own expense. The owners of two residential units on the third and fourth floors of a residential complex in Munich had sued. Although they were not physically disabled, they wanted to install an elevator as a precaution, which they wanted to pay for themselves. The owners’ association blocked itself and the owners went to court.
They were implemented on the basis of a regulation that privileges construction measures to create accessibility. The same applies to installing charging stations, burglary protection and connecting to high-capacity digital networks. In doing so, the legislature has expressed a “societal interest” – in inclusion, energy transition and digitalization. In principle, such measures have priority. The owners’ association can therefore only exercise its veto in exceptional cases if the facility is to be “fundamentally” redesigned. According to the BGH, this cannot be the case with an elevator.