Building application "deferred". What does that mean?

Hello everyone,

we bought a plot of land in Hamburg in mid-June (with suspensive conditions). The purchase contract becomes legally effective if 1. the preliminary building permit is positive (to be issued in September) and 2. the building application is approved. We submitted the building application (simplified approval procedure) on 10.11.14. Today, we learned from our engineering planning office that the building application has been "put on hold" due to lack of processing capacity. According to our planning office, the authority has the right to do so. The delay could mean, in the worst case, that the processing period may be up to 12 months (much too long for us). We are somewhat shocked.

Does anyone have expertise in Hamburg building law? Could this be true?

Thank you and best regards

Hello,

is there no one who is familiar with this? We are - as before - confused about the procedure. I have heard that this approach ("Zurückstellen von Bauanträgen") is very unusual and generally only occasionally used for larger industrial buildings.

Best regards

Hello, have you asked your planning office about this? They should normally be familiar with the local conditions and possibly be able to check there to find out what the issue is. Maybe they just want to postpone everything over Christmas.

Why don't you call the building authority Hamburg????

Hi,
well, I don't know of any case where the office simply puts the building application on hold without any reason just because a few employees are sick or on vacation.
You need to follow up, something is not right......

Regards

Sounds like that to me as well. With us, the application was also postponed because there was an unclear legal situation. It was only after that (a good half year later) was clarified that things moved forward.

VG

K1300S