So, I want to have a structural engineer come to take a look at the property I want to purchase.
One of the stipulations is that I must be able to produce the dimensional survey, which I understand to be the property survey. That’s my first question: is the ‘dimensional survey’ the same as the ‘property survey’?
Next: the realtor has only provided the cadastre, and states there is no property survey. So my next question: what can I glean from this? Is the cadastre the equivalent? Is this acceptable, to not have a property survey?
I do feel I should have a property survey, and wouldn’t it be lovely (but I’m dreaming of course) to have an architectural plan. But if the realtor can’t provide anything other than the cadastre and it’s not the same as what the structural engineer needs me to provide, to whom would I go next?
I’ll check with the structural engineer for any suggestions he might have; but would anyone have any recommendations, please?
The cadastre is simply the town plan, so all you see on that is your property’s location and footprint. I suspect there has never been a property survey done for most French houses. For property taxes where you need to calculate the total surface area of living space, I think most people end up crawling round the house with a tape measure and measuring up as near as they can. That’s what I did, in fact I bought an electronic one for the purpose.
Yes you’re totally correct, which is why I said “living space”. If it were simply footprint you could probably get that from the plan cadastrale? or if not it would be simply a case of measuring from one end of the house to the other, much easier than measuring each space separately (and then wondering why the first floor is a couple of metres longer than the ground floor, never did figure that one out)!
But that seemed off topic here - my point was simply that many people don’t have any “plans” of the house that they can quickly look at and see the measurements of the relevant rooms.
I was wondering if they simply want a plan showing exactly which bits are the owner’s responsibility. Straightforward on a detached house, harder in a terrace, perhaps complicated in a hilltop village. One of my friends recently bought a small town centre house where the garden is at the top of a massive medieval wall that was once part of the chateau fort. She was advised to check who was responsible for the wall as any future problems would be expensive. Luckily the wall is the commune’s responsibility.
My previous post wasn’t really off topic, it was clarifying your own.
Honestly Anna it does. There are rules about areas like kitchens, bathrooms, hallways and places with limited headroom. The official living space upstairs in my house is less than half that of the ground floor. A huge difference.
Perhaps I’m being pedantic but, if I am, I would have thought that you of all people would understand.
As it is nobody is actually sure what the OP needs.
Am I right in thinking that one can obtain an official “Cadastrale drawn to scale”… so that when you measure between this boundary here (of house or land) to that boundary there… … the exact size can be calculated… and one can find the exact footprint of land and/or building. ???
I think something like this was printed out at the Mairie a while ago…not for me, for someone else, which is why my memory is vague…
Yes I know, and that’s why I specifically said “living space”, thinking it would make this clear. You don’t live in a hallway or a utility room…
But maybe I’ve just got so used to thinking of “living space” as a straight translation of “surface habitable” and therefore in my mind it has all the same connotations, that I’ve become blind to the fact that newcomers might not pick up on it.
Hi Dominic and Anna,
is there a distilled definition of living space for calculating TdH purposes? I’m guessing that hallways, cupboards, bathrooms, are exempt, room surface where head height below x.y m would be exempt, rooms without windows (thinking of a storage area in our converted attic here)?
but maybe it does.