They build a house facing the sea and its neighbors lose 25% of the views: Justice orders it to be demolished and sets a fine of 300 euros for each day of delay

have a house with sea views and seeing how a new construction covers a good part of the landscape can end up causing a major conflict between neighbors, especially when irregularities also appear in the works. This is what happened in Corsica, where some owners built a house that caused their neighbors to lose around 25% of their views of the sea and the Court ended up ordering it to be demolished.

As collected from Figaro Immobilierin 2010 the neighbors obtained a permit to build a house in front of theirs, and before the works even began, they appealed the authorization, and three years later the court ruled in their favor, canceling the permit because the application was incomplete.

Despite the cancellation of that permit to build the house, the neighbors continued trying and, years later, in 2017, they obtained a new permit with which they finally built a house 8.41 meters high. That was when the confrontation with the neighbors returned to court.

An expert concluded that the house had taken away around 25% of their sea views.

During the judicial process they maintained that before the neighbors built the house, they enjoyed unobstructed views of the sea and that the construction had considerably reduced their panoramic views.

To verify this, a report was commissioned from a judicial expert in which it was concluded that the house had lost approximately 25% of the sea views and the only way to recover the previous situation was to demolish it.

Despite this report, at first the Bastia Superior Court refused to order the demolition, considering that the cancellation of the first permit, which had occurred due to incomplete documentation, was not sufficient in itself to justify such a serious measure.

However, they decided to appeal and, during this process, the second permit, with which the house was finally built, was also annulled because several irregularities were detected in the house. Among other issues, it had been built on a space of 1.20 meters when it should have been 40 centimeters, its location with respect to the street did not conform to what was planned and it did not respect the required distances with the neighboring property. In addition, it was considered that fraud had occurred when obtaining the permit.

The Justice orders the demolition of the house and gives three months to do so

Finally, the Court of Appeal of Bastia agreed with them and ordered the demolition of the house, both for the cancellation of the building permit and for the damage caused to the owners of the house next door.

And it was not just about the views, since the expert’s report had also stated that they had suffered a loss of privacy and a reduction in the entry of sunlight.

The owners received a period of three months from the notification of the sentence to demolish the house, and if they did not do so, they would have to pay a fine of 300 euros for each day of delay.