Guarantee for construction defects

Signing the handover record is not the end of anyone's responsibility. Construction work in Lithuania carries guarantee periods set by statute, and while they run, part of what appears in the flat is the builder's problem rather than the owner's. This applies whether or not the word “guarantee” appears anywhere in your contract.

What protects a buyer after handover

The foundation is the Civil Code: guarantee periods for construction work are set by its rules on construction contracts, and the seller's liability for the quality of what was sold by the rules on sale. The Law on Construction adds the liability of the parties to a construction project. In practice a buyer has two distinct routes: a claim against the seller as seller, and a claim as the recipient of a construction result.

The important line runs between visible and hidden defects. Visible ones are those an inspection can find, which is why their place is in the handover record. Hidden ones are by definition not visible at handover — they appear when the season, the load or the humidity changes, and it is for them that the guarantee periods carry the most weight.

Guarantee periods and when they start

The statute sets not one period but several: a shorter one for the construction result generally, a longer one for hidden defects, and a separate one where a defect was deliberately concealed. The exact figures have to be read off the Code and your own contract rather than recalled from memory — they differ, and they are easy to confuse.

What matters most to a buyer is the start date. It is generally the completion of construction or the handover of the work, not the day you personally bought the flat. On the resale market that means part of the period has already elapsed, which is worth checking before the purchase rather than after. A contract may set a longer period than the statute; it may not set a shorter one.

Who the claim goes to

The addressee depends on who did what. For a flat bought from a developer, your contract is with the developer, and that is where the claim goes first — even if a subcontractor did the work, because you have no contract with the subcontractor. For common parts of the building the building's manager usually acts, since those parts are the owners' common property.

Equipment guarantees from manufacturers sit alongside all of this: the boiler, the ventilation unit, appliances. They have their own periods and their own procedures, and they do not replace the construction guarantee. Ask for those documents at handover; hunting for them afterwards is hard.

How to make the claim

Claims are made in writing and without delay once the defect is noticed. Four things belong in the letter: what happened and where, when it was noticed, photographs, and what precisely you are asking for — repair, a price reduction, or compensation. A message to a sales manager is not a claim, although that is often where it starts.

Small habits that decide the case later: keep proof of sending, record every inspection, and do not start repairing yourself before the defect has been examined, because afterwards there is nothing left to show. If the answer is silence or a refusal, the next steps are an expert examination and the legal route — at which point you need a lawyer, and you need one with the file already assembled.

Common parts of the building

The facade, the roof, the stairwell, the pipework beyond your walls, the grounds and the paving are common objects. An individual owner may write about them, but decisions about common parts are taken by the owners together and executed by the manager. So a defect in the facade or the stairwell is reported to the manager and the developer at the same time.

One very practical check before buying follows from this: ask whether the building has open guarantee claims and how they are being handled. The value of a building where guarantee work is done properly is not in anybody's words — it is in the grounds and the stairwell still looking, several years on, the way they looked at completion.

This article is general information and is not legal or technical advice. The periods and rights that apply to you are set by the Civil Code and by your contract, and are worth checking with a lawyer before a claim is made.