Inspection and warranty periods: the table that decides who repairs, and until when

The day possession of an apartment is handed over, a legal track opens that most buyers never read about. The Sale (Apartments) Law, 1973 does not speak of a single "warranty". It defines two separate periods, each carrying a different rule on who must prove what, and a schedule that gives every component in the apartment its own number of years.

The gap between the two periods is the practical difference between a repair that happens and a correspondence that drags. A buyer who finds a crack in the external cladding in year five stands in an entirely different legal position from one who finds it in year eight.

The two periods, and what separates them

The inspection period begins when possession of the apartment is handed over. Within it, the duty to repair rests with the seller, who is released only by proving the defect was caused by the owner's fault. The default, in other words, is a repair.

The warranty period begins the moment the inspection period ends, and runs for three years. Here the rule reverses: the buyer must show that the defect stems from the design, the workmanship or the materials. In practice that proof is an engineer's opinion, which costs money and time.

The schedule: years by component

The Schedule to the Law sets the inspection period by the type of defect, not by the room or the clause in the contract. That is the logic any buyer drafting a letter to a developer should follow: not "there is a problem on the balcony", but "failure of the building's waterproofing".

The Law distinguishes a "failure" — full or partial loss of function of a product or system — from a "defect", which is a fault in function and durability, including loss of stability, integrity, quality and appearance. The wording you choose in your letter decides which row of the schedule you are invoking.

Three mistakes that keep repeating

1. Waiting for the inspection visit. Many buyers save up complaints for the end-of-first-year walkthrough. The schedule does not work that way: each component has its own clock, and waiting forfeits precisely the short-period items.
2. Repairing it yourself. Calling in a private tradesman before the seller has been notified and given the chance to repair moves the discussion from who is liable to what exactly was done there.
3. Vague wording. "Damp in the living room" is not a cause of action. "Failure of the building's waterproofing" is — with four inspection years behind it.

What to do in practice

1. Record, in writing and in photographs, the date of discovery — not the date you decided to act.
2. Find the matching row in the schedule and draft the notice in its language.
3. Send the notice to the seller in writing and keep proof of delivery.
4. Give the seller a reasonable opportunity to repair — that is the seller's duty, and also the seller's right.
5. If no repair follows, take legal advice before the inspection period closes.

Where this touches the project you are considering

The inspection schedule is identical in every project in Israel. What changes is what it means in practice — the quality of execution, and who is standing at the other end of the letter. A company that stays with the building after handover fixes the item in year two; a company that disappears leaves the buyer with an engineer's report and a claim. The company's projects and the quality standards it works to are set out on the projects page and the standards page.