Sukkot week kept the official data quiet, but the courts were busy with fights inside shared buildings. A Haifa court upheld an order to take down two balconies because the owners never got their neighbors’ consent. A building tribunal threw out a leak claim after an expert traced the water to the claimant’s own flat. And a Tel Aviv judge cut about ten years off a delay payout in an Afula land deal.
Photo: an apartment block in Haifa with balconies added and closed in, in many different ways. It is not the building in the case. Sarah Stierch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
24 signatures for a balcony, and a leak claim aimed at the wrong flat
- A couple in a Haifa building of 32 flats with four entrances cut openings in the outside walls and built two balconies with small roofs. They cut the openings without a permit and without the neighbors’ consent. The city later approved one balcony, but they built two. Owners of five flats went to the Land Registration Supervisor, the official tribunal for disputes in shared buildings, which ordered the balconies removed. On September 15 the Haifa District Court rejected the couple’s appeal, civil appeal 30917-07-25 (judgment on Psakdin; ynet, October 1). Enlarging a flat in a shared building needs the explicit consent of the owners of three quarters of the flats, here 24 of 32, counted across all four entrances. Balconies other owners had built did not count as consent, because no one showed they were legal. Even if all nine balconies in the building counted as yes votes, the couple had at most 9 of the 24 consents they needed, 37.5 percent by our own division. They pay NIS 15,000 in costs. The court put the order on hold for 90 days so they can try to collect consent from 24 owners; if they cannot, the balconies must come down. A city permit is not enough on its own, so collect the neighbors’ consent before you build, and ask to see it before you buy a flat with an added balcony.
- In another shared building, a first-floor owner said water from the planters of a couple two floors up was staining her balcony and causing mold. She asked the Land Registration Supervisor, Karmit Katzir-Brin, to make them install drainage. An expert both sides agreed on found limescale from extra water, but called it damage from her own flat, not water dripping from above, and said her own overflow drain seemed to leak. The claim was dismissed, file 5/1442/2025, as reported by Globes on October 1; her lawyer says the supervisor got it wrong. She pays about NIS 15,000 in legal fees plus NIS 1,500 for the expert, about NIS 16,500 by our own sum. Before you sue a neighbor over water, pay for a leak test, because the person who sues has to prove where the water comes from.
An Afula delay payout loses about ten years
- In 2009 landowners in Afula signed a combination deal with the developer A.D.A. Tamir. In a combination deal the owners supply the land and are paid in finished flats. Three buildings were planned, only one went up, and the owners received four flats. A first arbitration, a private hearing the two sides choose instead of a court, gave them agreed damages of $150,000 plus monthly payments for the delay up to 2016, when they sued. On appeal, the arbitrator, retired judge Dania Keret, ran the monthly payments all the way to her own 2026 award, adding about ten years and millions of shekels. Tel Aviv District Court Judge Yehudit Shevach has now cut that decade back out, case 57361-02-26, as reported by Globes on October 1. She ruled that a payout that keeps growing while the case drags on goes against public policy and rewards delay. Ten years of monthly payments is about 120 payments struck out, by our own count. The landowners pay NIS 20,000 in costs. If you sign a combination deal, make the delay clause say how much is paid and also until what date.
Buying a flat that someone has added to or changed? Our guide to checking building permits before you buy shows what to ask for first.
