Maintenance Plan for a Norwegian Sameie: Is It Required?

The Norwegian Condominium Act (eierseksjonsloven) has no requirement that a sameie shall have a maintenance plan: the word is not in the Act. What the Act requires is that the sameie keeps the common areas in proper repair and that the board sees to maintenance and operation. The same applies in the main to a borettslag: § 5-17 of the Cooperative Housing Act (burettslagslova) sets a duty to maintain, not a duty to plan. That is an answer about what the two Acts say, not about what other rules, lenders or insurers require; we have not gone through those. Lovdata publishes the burettslagslova in Nynorsk, so the quotations from it are in Nynorsk; the quotations from the Condominium Act are in Bokmål. The quotations are the text of the Acts, taken from Lovdata on 7 November 2026. We offer no ready-made template, but go through what the law actually says about maintenance.

Is "vedlikeholdsplan" in the Condominium Act?

No. We searched the whole text for the word, and it does not occur. The same goes for the word "langsiktig" (long-term). For the burettslagslova a search for "vedlikehaldsplan" gave no hits either. That does not mean a plan is a bad idea, only that the Act does not require it in itself. When someone says a maintenance plan is required by law, the source may be the articles, an agreement with a lender or an insurer, or a general view of good practice; the Condominium Act itself does not say it.

What the Condominium Act requires instead

The sameie's duty is in § 33:

«Sameiet skal holde utvendige og innvendige fellesarealer, inkludert bygningen og felles installasjoner, forsvarlig ved like.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 33 første ledd)

«Vedlikeholdet skal utføres slik at skader på fellesarealene og de enkelte bruksenhetene forebygges, og slik at seksjonseierne slipper ulemper.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 33 første ledd)

It is a duty about the result, not about documentation. How the sameie gets there, with a written plan, an annual walk-through or something else, the paragraph does not say. It is the board that shall see to it:

«Styret skal sørge for vedlikehold og drift av eiendommen og ellers sørge for forvaltningen av sameiets anliggender i samsvar med lov, vedtekter og beslutninger på årsmøtet.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 57)

Each owner has a duty of their own for their part:

«Seksjonseieren skal vedlikeholde bruksenheten slik at skader på fellesarealene og andre bruksenheter forebygges, og slik at de øvrige seksjonseierne slipper ulemper.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 32 første ledd)

The Act's division is thus twofold: the sameie for the common areas, the individual owner for their unit. The articles can move the duty:

«I vedtektene kan det fastsettes at vedlikeholdsplikten etter denne paragrafen helt eller delvis påligger sameiet.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 32)

So read the articles before you decide who maintains what.

Money for future maintenance

The Act says nothing about a plan, but it does say something about setting money aside. Under § 29 each owner pays an advance towards the common costs, and:

«Akontobeløpet kan også dekke avsetning av midler til fremtidig vedlikehold, påkostninger eller andre fellestiltak på eiendommen dersom årsmøtet har vedtatt slik avsetning.» (Eierseksjonsloven § 29 tredje ledd)

The provision is thus something the annual meeting decides. This is where a plan is useful in practice: an owner who sees a higher advance asks why, and a list of what is to be done and roughly when makes the proposal easier to pass. That is a practical consideration, not a legal requirement.

Borettslag: § 5-17

In a borettslag the duty is in § 5-17:

«Laget skal halde bygningar og eigedommen elles i forsvarleg stand så langt plikta ikkje ligg på andelseigarane.» (Burettslagslova § 5-17 første ledd)

And the articles can move the boundaries:

«I vedtektene kan vedlikehaldsplikta fastleggjast annleis enn det som går fram av paragrafen her.» (Burettslagslova § 5-17 fjerde ledd)

Here too the answer to "must we have a plan?" is that the word is not in the Act. If the articles of a particular borettslag require a plan, that requirement applies, and then you must read the articles, not only the Act.

Why make a plan anyway?

Not because the law requires it, but because the duty to keep the building in proper repair is easier to meet, and easier to explain, when there is an overview. Some practical reasons:

• The board can show the owners what the advance and any provision are based on.
• A new chair takes over an overview of what has been done and what is waiting.
• Quotes and agreements can be compared against a shared understanding of what is necessary.
• The annual meeting gets a basis to decide on when it is to approve a provision under § 29.

This is advice, not the Act's requirement, and we state no minimum standard for what a plan should look like.

How a board can make a usable plan

1. List the building parts: roof, facade, windows, pipes and risers, ventilation, lift, common areas and grounds.
2. Note the age, the last measure and the estimated remaining life of each part.
3. Set an approximate time and a cost estimate per measure.
4. Add up what should be set aside per year, and put it to the annual meeting if you want to decide on a provision under § 29.
5. Update the plan when something is done or an assessment changes, and store the documents in one place.

What Unitify does

The maintenance plan is written by the sameie, the cooperative or its manager; Unitify does not write it for you, and no plan becomes a legal duty because you use Unitify. What we help with is the work around it: an equipment register with service history, requests and fault reports per property, charges and payments per apartment, and notices to owners in the resident app. AI suggests service tasks and intervals per piece of equipment from the manufacturers' manuals, and a person approves them; it does not draft a building-wide plan. Documents, such as the plan and the material for the annual meeting, sit in one place. The app interface is in English for now and is set up for each project; there is no Norwegian interface yet. Unitify does not connect to any public register or system.

If you sit on a board or manage several sameier, you can start free on Unitify's page for Norway. You can also read about the sameie annual meeting.

Sources: Lov om eierseksjoner (eierseksjonsloven) and Lov om burettslag (burettslagslova), Lovdata, last amended by LOV-2025-12-19-114 from 1 January 2026; checked 7 November 2026. We have not read requirements from lenders, insurers, tax or building authorities. Check the current wording and the articles before relying on the text. This is not legal advice.