WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO TO REGULARIZE YOUR HOUSE IN SPAIN?. WHAT IS AFO?.

The current regulations in Spain allow certain types of irregular buildings to redirect their situation. AFO which stands for "Asimilado a Fuera de Ordenación", is basically a special legal regime, which consists of the administrative and legal regularization of buildings built without a municipal license that are legally prescribed, solving a social, environmental and urban problem.

Houses with more than six years built in sparsely populated parcels and whose urban infringement have been prescribed continued to have a problem: they could neither be regularized nor demolished. Most of these houses built outside the urban nucleus (the so called "cortijos", the country houses, even big and fancy "chalets"), are built on undeveloped land or rustic land, and are not regularized, since on undeveloped land, residential use is very restricted, with few exceptions.

These properties do not have, in most cases, no longer a license, if not electricity, water, or sanitation (they work with "pozos negros" or cesspools ...), and sometimes they were not even registered in the Property Registry either.

That is why, in order to regulate these sort of situations, about which the City Council could not do anything, the Decree for the regularization of homes on undeveloped land was approved in Andalusia back in the day and after that this last regulation: DECREE LAW 3/2019, OF SEPTEMBER 24th, ON URGENT MEASURES FOR ADEQUACY ENVIRONMENTAL AND TERRITORIAL OF IRREGULAR BUILDINGS IN THE AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY OF ANDALUSIA.

The entry into force of said regulations allows, if certain requirements are met and through the appropriate municipal procedure, the recognition of the prescription of urban infringement, the tolerance of use, as well as that the home can be registered in the Registry ownership, if it wasn't, and access to services by supply companies (if they do not already have it). This procedure is to obtain the "recognition assimilated to outside ordination" (the previoulsy mentioned AFO).

If you were interested in further details regarding this procedure, please contact us right away.