The end of artificially inflating housing prices. The government announces a fight against hidden costs

• Developers include the area under partition walls in the usable area of ​​the premises, says Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz.
• Hundreds of thousands of people have lost billions of zlotys in total to developers. This violates the collective interests of consumers - he adds.
• It is worth considering implementing the rules for calculating the area under partition walls into the content of implementing regulations - indicates the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

For almost 30 years, developers have been selling Poles "pseudo-meters" , i.e. meters under partition walls

- said Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, Minister of Funds and Regional Policy.

The minister said that governments remain surprisingly powerless in this matter.

Hundreds of thousands of consumers fell victim to these unfair practices, losing billions of PLN to developers.

- noted Pełczyńska-Nałęcz.

For this reason, she sent an official letter to the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).

In the letter, she requested that actions be taken to ensure the application of the law in the matter of calculating the usable area of ​​apartments and to enable injured parties to effectively pursue their rights.

We will soon come up with a legal solution that will put an end to such practices once and for all.

- announced the minister.

The Minister, citing legal acts, stated that the development agreement should include an indication of the method of measuring the usable area of ​​a residential premises or a single-family house.

In practice, there are situations in which the legal provisions regulating this matter are not applied by developers.

- she noticed.

She pointed out that the currently applicable standard for calculating surface area does not take into account the horizontal cross-section of internal partitions (including partition walls located inside the premises).

As she explained, the area underneath the internal partition walls does not meet the criteria necessary to be classified as usable area.

She also stressed that the previously applicable standard did not include such surface area, with certain exceptions.

In practice, developers include the area under partition walls in the usable area of ​​the premises . They do this despite the position of the Polish Committee for Standardization, which did not recognize partition walls as easily removable elements.

- noted Pełczyńska-Nałęcz.

She explained that this means that the consumer pays a price for a premises with an actual area smaller than that specified in the contract , which in her opinion is contrary to the Act on Counteracting Unfair Market Practices.

In connection with the above, it is reasonable to state that there are all grounds to believe that the developers' practice described above violates the collective interests of consumers.

- the minister emphasized.

She asked the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection whether these practices were the subject of analysis and proceedings conducted by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection and what the result of these actions was.

I also ask you to take action to ensure compliance with the law when determining the usable area of ​​apartments and the possibility of effective enforcement of their rights by aggrieved persons.

- appealed the Minister of Funds.

In response to the appeal, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Tomasz Chróstny, sent a letter to the Minister of Funds and Regional Policy, Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, in which he indicated, among other things, that he shares the postulate of not including the area under partition walls in the usable area of ​​​​the premises and of clarifying the regulations in this respect .

The President of the UOKiK stressed, however, that the competent authority in this matter is the Minister of Development and Technology, who has legislative powers in the field of building regulations, in particular by issuing a regulation specifying the scope of application of standards.

We are ready to support any initiatives in this area that will increase the scope of consumer protection and clarity of measurement of the area of ​​residential premises offered by developers.

- wrote Chróstny.

He added that the method of measuring the usable area results from the implementing provisions of the Construction Law , specifying the scope and form of the construction design, and the minister responsible for construction (currently the Ministry of Construction and Technology) is responsible for them.

These regulations refer to the Polish Building Standards, and the body competent for these standards is the Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN).

The problem is that the implementing regulations refer to the content of the currently issued standard, which may change in the future (in the past it was already subject to appropriate changes). (...) The Minister has no direct influence on the content of standards issued by PKN, but he is the author of the implementing regulations relating to their application. In order to avoid any doubts, it would be worth considering implementing the principles of the method of calculating the area under partition walls directly into the content of the implementing regulations.

- explained Chróstny.