Latvian House File (Mājas lieta) and BIS: What Goes In and Who Keeps It

The short answer. A house file must be opened for every multi-apartment residential house. It is kept by the owner, or by the person the owner has appointed, and for a manager it is one of the obligatory management activities. Most confusion is about BIS: the house file is not "only in BIS". The law requires some documents to be created in BIS, others to be uploaded to it, and lets the rest stay on paper or as ordinary electronic documents.

What a house file is, and who keeps it

Art. 8 of the Law on the Administration of Residential Houses (Dzīvojamo māju pārvaldīšanas likums) says a house file (mājas lieta) must be opened for every multi-apartment residential house. The owner keeps it unless the owner has named someone else — the law calls that person the house-file keeper (mājas lietas kārtotājs). For a manager, keeping the house file is one of the obligatory management activities listed in art. 6(2)(3), next to upkeep, work planning and financial accounting.

The State Construction Control Bureau lists the manager's duties together on its public managers' register page: register within a month of signing the management contract, report changes to the register within a month, and keep the house file in the Construction Information System.

What goes into the house file

The content list is set by the law itself — since 3 May 2022, when Cabinet Regulation No. 908 ceased to be in force, no further regulation sets it. The house file includes:

• the owners' decisions;
• the management contract, or the owners' agreement among themselves on management;
• the powers of attorney the owners issued for management;
• contracts relating to management activities;
• the planning documents: work plans, estimates, actual income-and-expenditure reports, the amount of accumulated funds, confirmations that maintenance work was carried out;
• information from inspections of the house, its plot, and the equipment and utility networks in it;
• verification data for common and individual meters, and the consumption readings that are not read remotely;
• the plot's boundary plans and any other documents or information the law provides for.

What is created in BIS, what is uploaded, what can stay outside

This is where the law splits the house file three ways. The list below maps the art. 8(3) list onto the fourth, fifth and sixth parts of the same article.

• Decisions taken at a general meeting or by written survey — Created in BIS (art. 8(5)); if not created in BIS, attached (art. 8(6))
• Owners' powers of attorney for management — Created in BIS; if issued outside BIS, attached
• Management work plans — Created in BIS
• Accumulated-funds figure — Created in BIS
• Inspection information (house, plot, equipment, networks) — Created in BIS
• Management contract or owners' own agreement — Uploaded to BIS (art. 8(6))
• Estimates — Uploaded to BIS
• Actual income-and-expenditure reports — Uploaded to BIS
• Confirmations of maintenance work — Uploaded to BIS
• Contracts on management activities, meter verification data and unread readings, plot boundary plans — Not named in those lists; the law allows paper or an electronic document (art. 8(4))

Documents signed in BIS have the same force as a hand-signed document or an electronic document signed with a secure electronic signature (art. 8(10)).

The deadlines: 14 days, and 28 February 2023

Once a document is received, the keeper adds it to the house file (paper or electronic) and the electronic documents, or their derivatives, to BIS within 14 days (art. 8.1). The regime has applied since the transitional date: the keeper had to start adding the information, electronic documents and powers of attorney to BIS, and preparing information in BIS, by 28 February 2023, and by the same date a manager had to submit the signed management contract, or a confirmation that the register data was current, to the register official in order to get access to each house file in BIS. Documents and information created before that date go into BIS at the keeper's discretion.

The Law on Apartment Property ties into the same system: a decision of the owners' community counts as notified from the moment it is signed in BIS or attached to BIS, and takes effect the next day unless the community has decided otherwise. A written-survey protocol, together with each owner's "for" or "against" on every question, goes into the house file in BIS within 14 days.

What BIS gives back

BIS is not only a store. Under art. 8(8), other information a manager needs that comes from technical documentation — building designs, energy certificates, technical-inspection opinions — is obtained by the house-file keeper through BIS functionality. And the identifying data of apartment owners, plus the property data needed for community decisions, is provided in BIS free of charge from state information systems.

A practical checklist for a manager

1. Check that every house has a house file with the contents list in art. 8(3).
2. Mark each document: create in BIS, upload to BIS, or may stay outside BIS.
3. Record the day each document is received and track the 14-day limit.
4. Add the survey protocol and each owner's vote to the house file in BIS within 14 days.
5. Keep owners' contact data current — it is the owners' duty to supply it, and invitations to meetings and surveys rely on it.

How Unitify handles it

Unitify does not replace BIS, and we do not currently claim an integration with BIS: documents the law requires you to create or upload in BIS are still handled in BIS. What Unitify does is hold the data the house-file documents come from. The history of requests and completed jobs on one platform can be the basis for confirmations that maintenance work was done. Billing in which every line shows where its figure came from makes the actual income-and-expenditure report easier to prepare. Meter readings from the resident app arrive in one place instead of on paper. Voting results and resident contact data are at hand when meeting or survey papers have to be prepared.

Unitify has a free plan; see the pricing page. For how we work in Latvia, see Unitify in Latvia.

Related reading

• Management fee: how it is calculated and whether VAT applies
• General meeting and written survey of apartment owners: how to convene and vote
• Managers' register: how to check a manager

Based on arts. 6, 8, 8.1 and transitional provisions 27–29 of the Law on the Administration of Residential Houses (redaction in force from 16 July 2025) and arts. 18 and 20 of the Law on Apartment Property (redaction from 29 May 2026), as published on likumi.lv. Latvian laws are amended often — check the current redaction before you rely on this. This is not legal advice.

To see how Unitify keeps the data that house-file documents come from, book a demo.