Partial Condominium: Who Votes and With Which Quorum

In a partial condominium an asset or service is objectively intended to serve only part of the building: think of a staircase reaching only some floors, a lift in a single shaft, or a roof terrace covering just one wing. The most important practical rule is clear: in resolutions concerning that asset, only the owners served by it vote. Anyone who is not a co-owner has no right to take part in the meeting on that point, and the quorum is calculated only on the interested owners.

What a partial condominium is

A partial condominium is neither a separate entity nor does it require a founding deed: it is configured automatically by law when an asset, because of its structural and functional characteristics, exclusively serves only some units. The legal basis is Article 1123, third paragraph, of the Italian Civil Code, which places the related expenses only on the owners who benefit from it. From this principle of ownership follows, as a consequence, the rule on voting.

The precondition is the objective purpose of the asset, not an agreement. If something serves only the left-hand building, the owners of the right-hand building are not co-owners of it and remain outside both the expenses and the decisions on that asset.

Who votes on the partial asset

The right to vote follows ownership of the asset. When the agenda concerns something, a service or a system serving only some units, only the owners of those units have the right to take part and vote. The other owners do not vote on that point, because they are not co-owners of the asset and the resolution produces no effects on them. This applies the principle that you do not vote on what is not common.

• Only the owners served by the partial asset vote
• Those who are not co-owners do not take part in that agenda item
• The constitutive and deliberative quorum is calculated only on the interested owners
• The thousandths tables for that asset involve only the units served

How the quorum is calculated

The quorum, meaning the number of voters and the thousandths needed to constitute the meeting and to resolve, is calculated with exclusive reference to the directly interested units. If a staircase serves ten flats out of twenty, decisions on that staircase turn on the thousandths and votes of those ten owners, not of the whole building. A frequent mistake is calculating the majorities on the condominium total: that counts votes of people with no title, risking annulment of the resolution.

Notice and agenda

Organisationally, the manager must pay attention to the agenda. Good practice is to state precisely which items concern partial assets and which units are involved, so that everyone knows what they will be able to vote on. Nothing prevents dealing in a single meeting with both topics common to the whole building and partial ones: what changes, point by point, is the composition of the vote, in relation to ownership of the asset.

Notice must still be sent to all owners when the meeting also deals with general matters, but participation in the vote on individual points remains limited to those entitled. Recording clearly who voted on each point is the best protection against disputes.

Expenses and consistency with the vote

Consistency between vote and expense is the heart of the partial condominium: those who pay decide, and those who decide pay. The expenses of the partial asset fall only on the owners served, according to the thousandths referring to that asset, and it is precisely those owners who vote. This symmetry prevents one part of the building from imposing costs on the other, or those bearing the expense from having no voice in the decisions.

Managing meetings with items of differentiated participation, quorums calculated only on the interested owners and tables referring to individual assets is hard to do by hand. With AmministraPro the manager sets up partial tables, identifies the units served and runs the meeting with the correct quorum point by point: the features are described on /funzioni and the plans on /prezzi.