Description and age certificate

The certificado descriptivo y de antigüedad — description and age certificate — answers two questions about a house: what exactly is built and since when. We sign it as the technical author, with the official stamp of the Colegio de Arquitectos, the regional architects' association, and it exists so that the deed to the property describes physical reality rather than an old version of it.

It is the notary who asks for it. It usually surfaces the same way: there is a transaction under way — a sale, an inheritance, a mortgage — and on reading the deed it becomes clear that what it describes is not what stands on the ground.

When it is required

Whenever the registered description has fallen behind. A house extended twenty years ago, a porch that was closed in, a storey that was added, an outbuilding that never made it onto paper. The deed still describes the property as it was registered at the time, and the notary needs it to describe the one that is there now.

And it can be done on any class of land. There is no category of plot where it is ruled out, because nothing is being asked permission for: what is being done is describing what exists. This is where most of the confusion arises, so it deserves a section of its own.

This is not a legalisation

They are two separate worlds, with two separate counterparts, and confusing them is expensive.

• Legalisation looks at planning rules and is settled with the town hall. The question is whether what is built matches what the plan allows on that plot.
• The description and age certificate looks at physical reality and is settled before the notary. The question is what is there and since when.

An example makes it plain. An urban plot zoned for a detached single house, with a maximum of ground floor plus one storey under the plan, and standing on it a building of ground floor plus three. That building is fuera de ordenación — outside the planning framework — and if it is to be regularised with the town hall, its legalisation will have to be looked at. But the notary, whether or not it is ever legalised, will want the deed updated so that it reflects what is there. The two procedures neither obstruct nor replace one another.

Hence the commonest and most damaging misunderstanding: believing that with the certificate in hand the building is now in order. It is not. It is described. If there is a planning enforcement file open on that building, the certificate does not close it.

How far it takes you with the land registry

Two things are easily run together here, and the answer is not the same for both.

Issuing the certificate is always possible, on any class of land. It is a technical document and does not depend on the planning status of the property.

Getting the registry to register a building by antiquity on the strength of it is a different question. That registration rests on article 28.4 of the Ley de Suelo, Spain's land act, which allows it once enforcement measures are no longer available because the relevant deadlines have expired, and which requires for the purpose a certificate from a competent professional establishing completion and its date. But those deadlines never run in three cases: on public domain land or land affecting it, on property subject to a public utility easement, and on specially protected land. In those cases the registry will additionally require the town hall to state expressly that no enforcement action is due.

We say so up front because it is the kind of detail that turns up late and wrecks a timetable. If your property sits on protected land the certificate is drawn up just the same, but the road to the registry has one more step in it.

What our service covers

The visit is short: an hour is usually enough to measure the house and record what is there. The real work comes afterwards, at the desk, and that is where a week goes: drawing up the description, reconciling it with the deed you have sent us, and dating each part of the building.

For the date we use whatever exists, and it is rarely a single source: what the owner can tell us, any drawings that survive, and historical aerial photography, which lets us look at the plot year by year and see in which flight each structure first appears. Where the sources disagree, the ones that date themselves win.

The certificate is issued with the official stamp of the Colegio de Arquitectos, which is how the notary wants it.

Timescales, paperwork and where we work

An hour on site and about a week to delivery. From you we need the deeds to the property: they are the other half of the job, because the certificate comes out of comparing what the paper says with what is on the ground. Unlike the ICUC or the IVG, here you do have to provide something.

Every case is quoted on its own, with the house in front of us, before we start. We survey in Altea and across the rest of the Marina Baixa and Marina Alta — Calpe, Benissa, Finestrat, La Nucía, Callosa d'en Sarrià, Moraira — which is as far as we reach without travel weighing on the job.

The three documents the notary asks for

This certificate rarely travels alone. The notary usually asks for a set, and it helps to know why each piece is in it:

1. The description and age certificate, covering what is built on the privately owned plot and officially stamped: it says what is there and since when.
2. The ICUC: it says that what is there fits inside the plot as the Cadastre has drawn it.
3. The IVG, only where needed: when the ICUC comes back negative, or the matter touches boundaries, the real perimeter of the property has to be fixed in coordinates.

The three are often commissioned together and feed the same deed, so sharing one survey works out better than ordering them separately and at different times.