One of the advantages of building a custom home on the Costa Blanca is being able to choose its location. Some clients want to be in secluded areas, others prioritize the views, and others want to be as close to the sea as possible. One of Arquifach’s tasks is to help choose the ideal site for construction. There are a multitude of technical considerations that must be taken into account. That is why in this article we are going to talk about the municipal urban planning report and the information it provides about a piece of land or plot.
What is the urban planning report?
It is a document that brings together the urban planning conditions of a plot. It contains all the information related to its characteristics (shape, area, etc.), and its legal and administrative status (classification, permitted uses, buildability, etc.) at the time it is drafted. Therefore, if the urban planning situation changes, its content may change. It is mainly used to determine the exact status of a piece of land in order to assess it in a purchase-sale transaction.
How is it obtained?
The recipients are those natural or legal persons interested in the information regarding that plot. It is usually requested from the Municipal Urban Planning Management of the locality.
What information does it exactly contain?
- The legal framework in force at the time the report is drafted.
- Identification and location of the plot.
- Urban planning instruments affecting the property, indicating whether these instruments are already in force or in the process of being processed.
- Classification and categorization, according to the current general plan and, if applicable, according to the general plan being processed.
- Detailed urban planning qualification, according to the current plan and, if applicable, according to the plan being processed.
- Specific building ordinances, paying attention to current regulations and, where applicable, regulations in process.
What important information will we be able to obtain and analyze when buying and building on the plot?
- Maximum buildability: it is the maximum surface area that can be built on a plot and is expressed by the fraction: m2 of construction / m2 of plot. This value is around 0.30m2/m2, meaning a maximum of about one third of the plot’s surface area can be built.
- Maximum number of floors: always refers to above ground, i.e., above the natural ground level, and is usually two floors. Important to differentiate this from basements and semi-basements.
- Maximum height: it is usually measured from the ground to the underside of the last slab under the eaves, in other cases to the top of the eaves. For two floors, the figure ranges between 6m and 7m.
- Setbacks from streets and neighbor boundaries: a setback is the location of a building or part of it behind a line drawn at a certain distance from a street or other parts of the building. On the other hand, a neighbor boundary is the line that marks the limits of a plot and separates it from others. The distance the construction must be from neighboring boundaries may be different from the setback from the street. It can vary between 4m, 5m, or the height of the construction.
- Maximum plot occupancy: refers to the percentage of the plot occupied by the construction. For this, the area occupied by the ground floor must be considered. It usually ranges around 25%, meaning the construction cannot occupy more than a quarter of the plot’s surface area; the rest must be for garden, parking, etc.
It is important to relate and interpret all the information gathered in the urban planning report and to request additional information that is not usually included in standard requests. As a general rule, these are not listed unless some concepts are specifically requested, such as the computation of porches and basement and semi-basement floors, or how the plot can be transformed in terms of earthworks (excavations and fills).
