ABSTRACT
According to Johannes Barmann, one of the fathers of the German apartment ownership statute, a person who purchases an apartment in an apartment ownership scheme enters into a threefold legal relationship. Firstly, he becomes the individual owner or title-holder of the apartment; secondly, he becomes the joint or common owner in undivided shares of the land; and thirdly, he becomes a member of the management body or unit owners' association which has to maintain the common property and manage the apartment ownership scheme. The legal rules concerning apartment ownership therefore straddle both the law of property and the law of associations. Two reasons may be advanced why ownership of an apartment should be treated as genuine ownership and not as a limited real right. First, if considered genuine ownership, it would be easier for courts to invalidate Draconian provisions. Secondly, to satisfy the psychological and social need most persons have to own their own home.
