Neighbor's lawsuit against approved building permit

If you have an Android phone, download the free app "Sonnenverlauf" from the Play Store. With it, you can simulate the sun's path for every address and every house for each day of the year, and various values are provided.

Sylvia

I would also be very cautious about continuing construction... in our region there was also an incident where the building permit was granted and later challenged by the neighbor...

Excerpt from the Regional Press:
From 1992 onwards, Mrs. XXXXX operated the village shop. In 1993/94, the family added a floor to the single-storey building. The fact that the renovation revoked the existing protection for the former shop proved to be their undoing, because now the permissible distance to the neighboring property was considered to be undershot. The neighbor sued and won. The district had granted a faulty building permit at that time. Now, due to an administrative court ruling, it is forced to enforce the demolition of the village shop.

In short: 16 years (!!!) after construction, the building had to be demolished at the owner’s expense.

I know the case. It was already discussed in the Greens.

But it does not say who has to bear the costs, i.e. owner or municipality.

Statement of the owners:

"A somewhat reasonable compensation including court costs would amount to 270,000 euros according to him"

"The district offered them 115,000 euros as compensation, a sum that would not even cover the expenses"

This is not the end, is it? Here the situation arises that the value of an old house including the extension must be appraised.

The price of a 6-month-old new building (in whatever stage of completion) can be determined much more easily.

That will be even more complicated, but a court must also decide that.

The dismantling of the store ultimately means a future loss. With a planned lifespan and usage duration of the store assumed to be 40 years (much longer is no longer sensible for commercial properties), a lost partial profit of 24 years arises (one can possibly insure oneself against such uncertainties). In addition, after dismantling, the store may no longer be economically operated from today’s perspective, ergo business closure threatens.

The economic damage must then again be untangled by an expert in another court proceeding - how high the compensation actually turns out to be is pure speculation.

However, this is - with appropriate insurance of the caseworker/department head (professional liability) - not a large amount. For my profession in NRW, for example, property damages of at least 3x €500K per year are insured, for individual projects this can be significantly higher.

On the other hand, this nicely shows why building authorities are becoming increasingly meticulous. The risks for caseworkers have increased significantly in the last 20 years and this can be noticed in many aspects of daily interactions with the authorities. They have – and for that, one must also have the perspective and understanding – naturally no interest in always holding the black Peter.

Best regards Dirk Grafe