Poland’s legislative system relies on the principle that buildings and other structures permanently affixed to a land constitute components of the land property, and thus, the property of the land owner (superficies solo cedit). Therefore, the ownership of the land extends above and below its surface. This property ownership right formula excludes stratified ownership, which would allow for separate ownership of each strata of the land or development. In the current legal status, use of a real property by a person who is not its owner, as an exception from the general rule, may take the form of perpetual usufruct, limited rights in rem or obligations.

Separate ownership of buildings and the right to build are proposed regulations that would make it possible to separate the ownership of buildings erected on, above or below the land, by granting them a separate legal status and creating the legal framework for carrying out construction projects on land owned by a third party. For a few years now, work has been under way to draft bills that stipulate the establishment of a new limited right in rem in the form of a right to build (by the Civil Law Codification Committee, which operated until December 2015 under the Ministry of Justice) and to determine the possibility of establishing separate ownership of buildings (at the Ministry for Development, formerly: Ministry of Infrastructure).

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