Lapinlahti faces €150,000 demolition bill after €1,400 sale

Lapinlahti may have to spend about €150,000 to demolish a derelict former municipal office building it sold for €1,400, Yle reports. The municipality is trying to find the property’s current owner or the deceased owner’s estate so it can resolve the building’s future.

The municipality sold the building and its plot in 2023 to Lappajärven Kauppapaikka, a company. The company’s ownership changed twice, and the last known owner died in December 2024, according to information received by the municipality.

Lapinlahti has been trying to contact the company since October 2024. The building was left without heat after its owner stopped paying heating and electricity bills, and its tenants had to leave. The municipality considers it dangerous and wants to demolish it, saying repairs are not worthwhile.

The empty building has been vandalised, with windows broken and items inside smashed. In April, the municipality’s environmental committee issued a cleaning order backed by a €12,000 conditional fine. In August, the municipality decided it could arrange for loose glass to be cleared from around the building and removed from it, then bill the owner.

After almost two years of attempts to reach the company, a former managing director contacted the municipality in August and said the company’s shares had changed hands. He had sold it in March 2023, shortly after it bought the building, to Päijät-Hämeen Senioripalvelut. That company later provided the municipality with a sales agreement showing that Lappajärven Kauppapaikka had been transferred to a man in Ostrobothnia.

The municipality is now trying to identify the deceased man’s estate, which it believes may own the company and the property. It is also seeking to buy the building and could take it over through compulsory purchase. If the municipality cannot secure the property, demolition costs could fall to taxpayers.