The developer: obligations and liabilities

The LOE defines the promotor as any person, natural or legal, public or private, who individually or collectively decides, drives, programmes and finances building works, for themselves or for their later sale, delivery or transfer. Each word widens the perimeter: one need not be a company, nor a professional, nor act for profit.

The most important practical consequence is the figure of the developer who does not know they are one. The individual building their own home, the self-developer, is a promotor. The owners' association driving a renovation is the promotor of those works. The company extending its warehouse for its own use is a promotor. Whoever builds for themselves and sells years later discovers that the developer's liabilities follow them towards the buyer. The condition depends not on the label but on the facts: deciding, driving, programming, financing.

The law crystallises the role into enumerable obligations, which work as the checklist of any well-run operation. They are worth walking through one by one at the start of each operation.

Holding over the site a right entitling them to build on it, the first legal check of any operation. The land registry check comes before any design spending.

Providing the documentation and prior information needed to draft the design, from planning to site studies, and authorising the works director's later modifications of it. Incomplete information translates into redesigns the developer ends up paying for.

Managing and obtaining the mandatory licences and administrative authorisations, and signing the works acceptance certificate: permitting is the developer's burden, even when executed through appointed technicians. Delegating the work does not transfer the obligation.

Taking out the insurance and guarantees the law requires, with the ten-year damage insurance first among them in housing. The policy is taken out before works start rather than during them.

And delivering to the purchaser the documentation of the executed works, the libro del edificio (building logbook), closing the documentary cycle of the process. The logbook is assembled during the works and delivered complete.

Developer's obligation	Timing	Consequence of failing it
Title to the right to build	Before commissioning the design	A design with no legal base and money lost
Documentation and prior information	With the design commission	Redesigns the developer ends up paying for
Licences and authorisations	Before works start	Stoppage and enforcement proceedings
Insurance and guarantees	Before works start	No transfer possible and direct liability
Acceptance minutes	On completion	Tacit acceptance with no record of the delivery state
Building logbook to the purchaser	At delivery	Legal breach and weakness in any claim

The LOE liability regime holds a singular rule for the developer: they answer jointly and severally with the other agents towards purchasers for material damage to the building, across the system's three periods, one, three and ten years. Jointly and severally means the purchaser can pursue the developer for the whole, without first identifying the causing agent, and that it is then the developer who claims back against whoever is responsible.

The logic of the design is deliberate: the developer chooses the other agents, governs the budget and sells the result, so the law places them as the final guarantor of quality towards the buyer. Two operational consequences follow. First: the selection of designer, contractor and site direction is the developer's most important risk decision, and saving on the agents' solvency or insurance is saving against oneself. Second: the works documentation, contracts, minutes, controls, building logbook, is the developer's defensive estate the day joint liability knocks on the door; the complete map of periods and liable parties is developed in the article on LOE warranties and liability.

In the economic mechanics of the process, the developer is the one who sets the frame in which everyone else works: the target budget, the quality level, the risk allocation of the works contract and the calendar. The position's characteristic economic decisions, how much to invest in design, which contract form, how much contingency to reserve, what price tension to accept at award, define the operation's risk profile far more than any later event on site.

The practical rule summarising the position: everything the developer does not invest in definition, complete design, serious quantities, clear contract, will be paid with a surcharge in the construction phase, where problems are resolved without competition and against the clock. Definition is the only investment recovered in every later phase.

The first is the self-developer who believes they are outside the system: the LOE's obligations and liabilities do not distinguish between professional and individual. The status of developer follows from the facts.

The second is delegating the permitting and disengaging: licences and insurance are the developer's own obligations, and their gaps always return to their door. Following the procedures through is part of the obligation.

The third is hiring agents without verifying insurance and solvency, weakening the chain on which recourse will rest if joint liability is triggered. The check is made before signing and repeated at each renewal.

The fourth is delivering the building logbook late or incomplete, breaching a legal obligation and gifting arguments in any later claim. The logbook is checked before the keys are handed over.