Hughes Krupica: Condominiums: What is Common Property?

O ur firm has recently seen an influx of enquiries in relation to the question of what constitutes ‘common property’ vis-à-vis ‘personal property’ in a condominium registered under the Condominium Act of Thailand. Potentially one reason for the increase in such enquiries is due to the rise in the number of condominium projects in and around Phuket, but another more probable reason is because, as Phuket’s condominium market matures, and more condominium projects and private condominium units are sold out to purchasers, the issue of use of the common property is becoming more prevalent.

Completed condominium projects often have common area space that is not ‘allocated’ as a residential or commercial unit in the registered condominium plans, and the use of such space is potentially a source of revenue for a condominium, or otherwise could be set aside for some specific purpose for the benefit of the so-called ‘joint owners.’ However, as one can imagine, there are regulatory requirements about the use of condominium ‘common property,’ in addition to potential joint owner approval requirements under the Condominium Act – as well as the registered rules and regulations.

Given this reality, use of the ‘common property’ can be a point of contention between joint owners, with various joint owners having differing ideas about how the unused property of a condominium should be allocated. One such point of contention we have heard recently is that it is unclear whether a particular part of a registered condominium is ‘personal property’ or ‘common property,’ and thus a proposed use of certain condominium property is stalled on the main question of this article – What does, in fact, legally constitute ‘common property’ of a registered condominium?

To be clear, ‘common property’ has a specific legal exhaustive definition set out in Section 15 the Condominium Act. In this author’s view, the definition of ‘common property’ can be summarised as follows:

‘Common Property’ is those parts of a registered condominium, including land and buildings, that are NOT registered on the public files at the Land Office as ‘Personal Property.’

An even shorter way of saying this might be: anything outside of the defined ‘personal property’ of a condominium is ‘common property.’

One might point out that my summary definition is merely a ‘negative’ one, and still leaves open a grey area for interpretation. However, the Condominium Act provisions on what constitutes ‘personal property’ supports this summary definition.

Under the Act, ‘personal property’ means the registered condominium units, which can be (and are) sold to purchasers, because they have their own condominium unit title deeds, which define the individual ownership of the area defined on the unit title deed as the condominium unit. Thus, anything outside of the such individually owned ‘personal property’ is the ‘common property' and is jointly owned proportionately by all individual owners of the ‘personal property.’