Land surveyor in Teulada-Moraira

Resale villas: what is built and what is declared

It is the enquiry we hear most often in Moraira. A house thirty or forty years old, with whatever each owner added: an enclosed porch, the pool pump house, a guest studio, a pergola that ended up as a dining room. The Cadastre (Catastro, Spain's land and property register for tax purposes) knows about part of it. The Land Registry (Registro de la Propiedad) sometimes knows only the original house.

We measure everything that has been built and compare it with the cadastral record and with the title deed (escritura). You receive a plan with each element identified and a note explaining what appears where. With that, your lawyer knows what to ask the seller for, and you know what will have to be regularised later, if that is possible, and with which document.

Declaring an old extension: ICUC and certificate of age

When a building is old enough that planning enforcement can no longer be taken against it, it can be registered in the Land Registry as a new build by age (obra nueva por antigüedad). The notary needs two technical documents: a certificate proving the completion date, and the cadastral building location report (ICUC), which places the footprint of the building within the plot with coordinates.

To date the work we use historical orthophotos and aerial flights, which on this coast show the year each pool and each porch appeared. We sign as chartered surveyors (colegiado), with our registration number. What we do not do is certify a date that the images do not support.

Topographic survey in Moraira: walls, terraces and access

Between the Cap d'Or and the port, plots step down in terraces held up by rubble-stone or dry-stone walls. On the urbanisation plan the boundary is a straight line; in reality it is a wall that winds a metre one way or the other. When your neighbour wants to put up a fence, or you want to build right up to the boundary, that difference matters.

We survey the whole wall, along its face and along its top, and draw it alongside the boundary on the old plan and the one in the Cadastre. If they do not match, we tell you by how much and where. If the case calls for it, we prepare the report for an agreement with the neighbour or for court.

Teulada village: vineyards, riu-raus and plot subdivisions

Inland, towards the old village and the dry-farmed partidas, the work is different: vineyards and almond groves, country houses with a riu-rau (the traditional arched porch used to dry raisins) and the division of inheritances. We measure, carry out the boundary demarcation (deslinde) with the adjoining owners and prepare the plot subdivision (segregación) with its GML files (the georeferenced parcel format the Cadastre and the Land Registry require) for the notary's office and the Land Registry. If the property does not allow the division you are looking for, we tell you before anyone pays for a project.

Typical cases in Teulada and Moraira

A couple about to buy a villa on the Moraira coast who want to know, before signing the deposit contract (arras), which part of the house is declared. An owner who needs to register the guest studio they built twenty years ago. A neighbour who has put up a fence and insists the boundary lies somewhere else. An architecture practice that needs a full topographic survey of a terraced plot to renovate the whole house.