Reading a memoria de calidades

Every house sold before it is finished comes with a document describing what it will be made of. In Spain that is the memoria de calidades, the schedule of qualities. It sits between a brochure and a technical annexe, and which way it leans depends on who wrote it.

Two developers can hand you a single page each, under the same heading. One gives the thickness of the insulation. The other says the finishes are of first quality.

The memoria is not the architect's technical project. That set of drawings and calculations is the building's real description; the memoria is a readable summary of the parts a buyer cares about, and it often travels with the private purchase contract. Whether it is annexed to yours, and what follows if the finished house does not match it, is a question for your own lawyer. The answer turns on the wording and on what the rest of the contract says. Ask it early, before you are attached to the house.

What a thorough one contains

A good memoria follows the order in which a building goes up, because that is the order in which decisions stop being reversible.

It begins underground. Foundation type, the soil study behind it, retaining structures, the drainage behind those walls. Then the structure, then the envelope: the exterior wall described layer by layer, the insulation with its thickness, the roof build-up and the waterproofing beneath it. Four or five lines, and a large part of the budget.

Then the openings. Window profiles by material and system, with or without a thermal break. Glazing written as a composition rather than as "double glazing". Ironmongery, shutters and how they operate, screens where windows open, and whether the large sliding doors are lift-and-slide or run on rollers.

Inside: floor material, format and laying pattern, skirting, wall finishes room by room, interior doors with their height, core and finish, wardrobe carcasses and what is fitted inside them. The kitchen described as joinery rather than as a photograph, so carcass, front finish, worktop material and thickness, edge detail, appliances by model. Bathrooms piece by piece, each with a series name: sanitaryware, taps, shower trays, screens.

The systems, and what lies outside

Then the systems, where thin documents tend to give up. Heating and cooling by type and unit, how many zones, where the machinery sits. Hot water production and tank capacity. Pipe materials. The electrical installation counted rather than characterised: circuits, sockets per room, light points, switch series, data outlets, provision for charging a car. Whether light fittings are included at all, or only the wiring that ends in a ceiling rose.

Finally everything beyond the walls, which is where budgets quietly fail. Terrace construction and the sub-base under it. Pool dimensions, filtration, water treatment, coping, lining. Exterior lighting, irrigation, planting, boundary walls, gates. The connections to mains water, power and drainage, and who pays for them. A memoria that stops at the front door has not finished.

Where the thin ones go quiet

Thin documents are rarely wrong. They are unspecific, which is much harder to argue with afterwards.

Look first for an adjective standing where a noun belongs. First quality, high-end, top brand: none of them can be measured on site. Then look for the missing count. "LED lighting throughout" says nothing about how many points there are, and in a large room that difference decides how the room can be used.

Pay closest attention to what disappears from view once the work is done. Insulation, membranes, the sub-base under a terrace, the fall on a flat roof, the sound separation between floors. You will never inspect any of it, which is why those entries are worth pinning down while they are still words on paper.

And there is o similar — or similar. It is not sinister. Products are discontinued constantly, and no honest developer will promise a tap that may not exist in eighteen months. But the phrase is only reasonable once someone has defined who decides what counts as similar, and against what test. Same manufacturer and series, equal or higher price, your written approval before any substitution: any of those turns an escape hatch back into a clause.

Read, too, for what is absent altogether. Appliances. Light fittings. Wardrobe interiors. Everything outside the building line. Furniture, obviously, but a document should still say so. A memoria that lists its exclusions was usually written by someone who has been asked the awkward questions before and would rather answer them in advance.

How to read one

Read it with the drawings open beside it, and count. Bedrooms in the text against bedrooms on the plan. Sockets against the rooms you will use. Wherever a number is possible and absent, that absence is the finding.

Then mark every item still open and ask how each one gets closed: who chooses, by when, and against what budget. An item carried as a stated allowance is workable, because you can hold an allowance next to a real price and see whether it is realistic. An item carried in silence will be decided by whoever is holding the trowel that morning.

So a memoria containing "to be confirmed" is often the better document. It names an open decision, gives it an owner and a date, and forces a conversation that has to happen anyway, before the concrete rather than after it. Confident silence gives you nothing to hold and no moment at which anything must be settled. A developer willing to write down what is not yet decided is telling you how they intend to work.

Check the version date as well, and keep the version attached to what you sign. Specifications evolve during a build, sometimes for good reasons. The document that matters is the one both parties can produce eighteen months later and still agree on.

We document our own projects the same way. A five-page extract from one of the specification books is at rocksure.es/en/specification-book.