Neighbors selling their roof to build apartments

Build apartments in the best neighborhoods of the cities and on the top floors, the most valued.

Make a city on top of the city.

It seems utopian, because there is usually no room for a pin in such coveted areas, but it is not.

The construction of retrofits allows new floors to be added to existing buildings and thus take advantage of the roof terraces, an element that is usually wasted, to obtain apartments, offices or storage rooms.

There are properties that have already done it and there could be many more.

“Through an inventory carried out for the Eixample of Barcelona, ​​some 800,000 square meters of buildable surface area on the rooftops were located.

Then we studied Madrid, San Sebastián, Seville, Pamplona and Paris, among other cities.

In total, we have identified about four million square meters,” says architect Joan Artés, who has been studying and applying the elevation of buildings for two decades and who, in addition, was the creator of the company La Casa por el Tejado, a pioneer in this type of work.

Artés' office has carried out around 40 actions with around 140 homes, most of them penthouses.

“We are currently working on projects in the Salamanca neighborhood and in Chamberí, in the case of Madrid, and in Barcelona's Eixample,” says this architect, whose interest in tracebacks comes from afar.

Take advantage of memories.

“In other times the rooftop was the place where the neighborhood interacted, where we played as children or the San Juan festivals were held.

They were better cared for because they had use.”

In 2005 he made his first elevation on a building on Passeig de Gràcia (Barcelona) that he saw every day when he went to work.

He built two more floors that he converted into two attics.

One of them would end up being his house.

This personal interest led him to develop a doctoral thesis on this way of building.

The formula is not abundant.

“It is a very specialized action in which urban planning, technical and economic viability requirements must be met,” says Laureano Matas, general secretary of the Superior Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE), whose headquarters on Paseo de la Castellana, 12 (Madrid), two new floors were added.

The essential requirement is that the building has not exhausted its remaining buildability.

“There is a large number of properties that have not exhausted their buildable capacity because in the 19th century they used to build whatever was economically possible and, in many cases, they were lower in height than permitted.

It was more profitable to promote a new building on another site than to build more floors,” comments the Joan Artés Architecture office.

New plant in Plaza del Doctor Letamendi (Barcelona).

The properties that fall within this scheme are located in the historic centers of the cities.

“In the buildings after the Civil War, all the buildability has been exhausted,” says Artés, whose office acts as an engineering company that accompanies the entire process, from the location of the right of flight —the equivalent of the land in a construction conventional—until the execution of the work.

The team identifies buildings that can still be built and contacts the homeowners' association.

If all the neighbors unanimously agree to sell their right of flight, they develop the architectural project for the investor, which is usually a developer that assumes the costs.

The priority for the promoter is that the operation is profitable.

“Their objectives are to obtain between 20% and 30% of the investment,” indicates the architect who specializes in renovations, who has worked with a dozen developers (Proemio, Lux Habitat, Comsa…) and has had an alliance for a year. with Uniq Residential, the developer that markets the Intemplo skyscraper in Benidorm, for the development of flight rights in Spain.

The destination of the resulting apartments is usually sale, although there are developers who prefer to patrimonize and rent.

Sometimes these are also self-promotions for own use.

The surface area of ​​these penthouses varies between 50 and 500 square meters, although the average is 100 meters.

The final price is the one set by the market and is usually high—due to being on the top floor and in coveted neighborhoods.

The investor's objective is to build the maximum number of floors permitted by urban planning regulations and try to ensure that the result is consistent with the existing property, both aesthetically and functionally.

The usual thing is for them to be one or two more floors, although they have been raised to five levels.

As these are often buildings with historical value and are protected, the project must pass the Heritage filters.

Passeig de Gracia, 100 (Barcelona).

Right to fly

The neighbors are usually reluctant at first to the proposal as there are not many references, although in most cases they end up giving in.

The owners do not have to make any outlay and it is estimated that their building appreciates more than 20%, among other things because the company is responsible for rehabilitating it and even installing an elevator if it does not have one.

And admitting a few more neighbors will reduce your coefficients and your community expenses.

To this we must add the sale of the right to fly.

“On Aragón street, in Barcelona, ​​or Lagasca street, in Madrid, for a right of flight of approximately 500 square meters, between 850,000 and 1,250,000 euros are paid depending on the condition of the property,” calculates Artés.

The problem with this type of action is the added weight, since the foundation is probably not prepared to support the new loads.

For this reason, industrialized construction is usually used, which is lighter and faster than conventional construction.

“It is essential that this is the case to minimize the weight to be added and not have to do many structural interventions or reinforcements in the existing foundation, as well as to minimize the inconvenience to the neighbors as much as possible during the construction phase.

We are talking about a third of the usual time: 6 months versus 18 months,” says Artés, who emphasizes that the owners are not usually evicted from their apartments during the work, with some exceptions.

Custom modules are manufactured, never standardized, to which the floors, bathrooms, kitchen, terraces and facilities are incorporated.

For an intervention of 500 square meters, about 12 modules would be necessary to be placed in one day.

The weight is reduced by a third compared to a conventional construction (from 1,200 kilos per square meter to 350).

For Laureano Matas, from the CSCAE, these actions make sense in a specific way, but not in a generalized way.

“Concentration is a way of building sustainably, but it is not cheap.

Furthermore, providing more density and buildability to city centers can create problems of lack of sufficient infrastructure.

It is difficult at the level of urban growth.”

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