Analysis of Legal Regulations and Proposed Changes in Definition of Contour of Building in Real Estate Cadastre

This paper analyzes the legal regulations related to cartography and surveying with regard to the building structures entered into the real estate cadastral database. Particular attention has been paid to the contour of a building structure in the register of land and buildings, and to one of the descriptive attributes – the development area. Under the current laws, the development area results directly from the contour of a building structure. The thesis of this paper is that the current manner of defining the contour of a building and the resulting development area do not reflect the factual status of the building in the field. In order to verify the above thesis, examples of various building structures have been provided that reveal flaws in the definitions. The result is a lack of uniformity in the collected cadastral data in the database of the real estate cadastre of Poland. The consequences of the definitions that are currently binding also include limited possibilities when using real estate cadastral data for economic and spatial planning as well as assessing taxes and benefits. Based on an analysis of the current legal acts and examples of the existing building structures, the author formulated proposals for a definition of the contour of a building structure and its development area.