Condo and Multifamily Work: Whose Property Is It?

Why this matters

In a single-family house the person who called you owns everything you will touch. In a condominium that stops being true somewhere inside the wall, and nobody marks the spot. A plumber who repairs a riser fitting on the unit owner's say-so has worked on property that person does not own and cannot authorize, billed someone who may not owe it, and taken on the failure if the fitting lets go in a building with forty units under it. The fix is a habit: before you quote or cut, work out who owns the part, who can say yes to the work, and whose insurance answers if it goes wrong.

This card owns that question for the whole PropertyTypes shelf. Everything here is a general map of how condominium documents usually work, not legal advice; when a real dispute over who owns or pays for something arrives, the association's attorney and the owner's insurance agent decide it, not the tech.

Three kinds of property in one building

A condominium is a building divided on paper into separately owned spaces plus everything shared.

• The unit. The space one owner holds title to, defined by boundaries written in the condominium documents. The owner can authorize work inside it, within the building's rules.
• Common elements. Everything in the building that is not part of a unit: structure, roof, exterior walls, shared pipes and ducts, hallways, the boiler room. Owned collectively, controlled by the association (the owners' corporate body, acting through its board and usually a management company).
• Limited common elements. Common property reserved for one or a few units: a balcony, an assigned parking space, a condenser pad, often the pipe stub that serves only one unit. The unit owner may pay for its upkeep, but it is still common property, and work on it often still needs the association's approval.

That third category is where most field mistakes happen, because the customer reasonably thinks "it only serves my unit, so it's mine."

Where the line is actually written

The boundary lives in the declaration (also called the master deed, or the CC&Rs in some states), recorded with the county when the condominium was created. Bylaws govern how the association runs; rules and regulations govern day-to-day conduct like work hours and elevator use. When the declaration is silent, the state's condominium statute fills the gap.

States differ here. Several adopted the Uniform Condominium Act or its successor, the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, whose default boundary rule (section 2-102) puts the finished surfaces (plaster, drywall, finished flooring) inside the unit and everything behind them in the common elements, and treats a pipe or wire running partly outside a unit as a limited common element if it serves only that unit and a common element if it serves more than one. Other states have their own acts with their own defaults, such as Florida's Chapter 718 or California's Davis-Stirling Act. The declaration usually overrides any default, so the default is a guess until you have read the document.

Here is the kind of language you are looking for. This is a mock excerpt, but real declarations read much like it:

ARTICLE 4 - UNIT BOUNDARIES
4.1 Each Unit consists of the space bounded by the
    unfinished interior surfaces of its perimeter
    walls, floors and ceilings. Paint, wallboard,
    plaster and finished flooring are part of the Unit.
4.2 Pipes, ducts, wires and conduits serving only one
    Unit, from the point of connection to a common
    line, are Limited Common Elements of that Unit.
4.3 Any pipe, duct or wire serving more than one Unit
    is a Common Element.
ARTICLE 9 - ALTERATIONS
9.2 No Owner shall alter any Common Element or
    Limited Common Element without written approval
    of the Board.

Note what 4.2 and 9.2 do together: the owner may pay for the branch pipe, but still needs the board's written approval to alter it. That combination is common and it is the trap.

How the line usually falls on the systems you work on

Treat this as a starting guess to be confirmed against the actual declaration, not a rule.

Insurance: two policies, one wall

Two policies usually stand behind a condo unit, and the line between them is set by the documents and, in some states, by statute.

• The association's master policy covers the common elements and, depending on its type, some of what is inside units. A "bare walls" policy stops at the unfinished surfaces. A "single entity" or "original specifications" policy also covers the interior as originally built. An "all-in" policy reaches further, sometimes to improvements.
• The unit owner's policy (often called an HO-6) covers what the master policy does not: interior finishes and improvements under a bare-walls master, personal property, and the owner's liability.

Florida's condominium act, for one, spells out by statute which interior items the association's policy excludes; elsewhere the declaration does. You do not decide coverage, and you should never tell a customer whose policy will pay. What you control is the third policy in the picture: your own general liability coverage, which is what answers if your work causes the damage. That is why buildings ask for a certificate of insurance before you start. See related: Getting Building Access in a Condo or High-Rise.

Who can say yes

• Inside the unit, on unit property: the unit owner, subject to building rules on hours, noise and access.
• Limited common elements: the owner may request and pay, but alteration usually needs the association's written approval, through management.
• Common elements: only the association. Not the owner, not a tenant, not the board member who lives on the third floor and waves you in. Ask for a work order or written approval from management.
• A tenant in a condo unit can request work inside the unit only as far as their lease and the owner allow; the owner authorizes.
• A rental apartment building has one owner: the landlord or its manager authorizes everything, and the tenant authorizes nothing structural. See related: The Multifamily Building Job Intake SOP.

Worked example: the leak at the riser tee

Unit 4C calls about a water stain on the kitchen wall shared with 4D. The plumber opens the drywall on 4C's side and finds a weeping threaded joint where the unit's 1/2 in cold branch connects to a tee on the 1-1/4 in cold riser. The riser serves units 2C through 12C, eleven units. The unit's own shutoff sits on the branch, downstream of the tee.

Ownership, from the declaration's articles 4.1 to 4.3. The drywall the plumber opened on 4C's side is a finished surface, so it is part of Unit 4C (4.1). The branch from the tee to 4C serves only 4C, so it is a limited common element of 4C (4.2). The tee itself is part of the riser, which serves eleven units, so it is a common element (4.3). The leak is in the tee's own threads, and because 4C's shutoff sits downstream of it, the joint cannot be isolated without shutting the riser. That puts the repair on the common element and makes it the association's work.

Authorization. The owner signed a work order for leak diagnosis and an opening. That authorizes exactly what the plumber has done so far. Repairing the tee needs management's approval, and so does the riser shutoff, which will take water from all eleven units. The plumber stops, photographs the joint with a reference for scale, and calls management with the finding.

Who pays, and what the plumber says about it. Nothing. The plumber reports where the leak is and which component it is on, and gives management and the owner the same photos. Whether the riser repair is the association's expense, whether the stained drywall is covered by the master policy or the owner's HO-6, and whether 4D's side has damage are questions for them and their insurers.

What going the other way costs. Suppose the plumber had shut the riser on the owner's okay, remade the joint and billed 4C. The owner disputes it once they learn the riser is the association's; the association says it never authorized work on its pipe or the shutoff of ten other units; and if the joint fails in a year, the plumber has worked on a common element without the owner's authority to give. Being right about the repair does not help with any of that.

What changes the answer. If the declaration's article 4.2 had said "including any fitting connecting to a common line", the tee might be read as the owner's, though shutting the riser would still need the building. If the building were a rental apartment, management is the only customer for every part of this. And in a co-op the owner holds shares rather than real property, and an alteration agreement governs; See related: Co-ops and Alteration Agreements.

References

• Uniform Condominium Act and Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, section 2-102 (unit boundaries), in states that adopted them
• Florida Condominium Act, Chapter 718, Florida Statutes; California Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act
• See related: Getting Building Access in a Condo or High-Rise
• See related: Shared Risers, Shutoffs and the Neighbor You Flood
• See related: Co-ops and Alteration Agreements