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Civ. Code, § 895 · Chapter 1. Definitions

Civ. Code, § 895

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) “Structure” means any residential dwelling, other building, or improvement located upon a lot or within a common area.

(b) “Designed moisture barrier” means an installed moisture barrier specified in the plans and specifications, contract documents, or manufacturer’s recommendations.

(c) “Actual moisture barrier” means any component or material, actually installed, that serves to any degree as a barrier against moisture, whether or not intended as a barrier against moisture.

(d) “Unintended water” means water that passes beyond, around, or through a component or the material that is designed to prevent that passage.

(e) “Close of escrow” means the date of the close of escrow between the builder and the original homeowner. With respect to claims by an association, as defined in Section 4080, “close of escrow” means the date of substantial completion, as defined in Section 337.15 of the Code of Civil Procedure, or the date the builder relinquishes control over the association’s ability to decide whether to initiate a claim under this title, whichever is later.

(f) “Claimant” or “homeowner” includes the individual owners of single-family homes, individual unit owners of attached dwellings and, in the case of a common interest development, any association as defined in Section 4080.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2012, Ch. 181, Sec. 29. (AB 806) Effective January 1, 2013. Operative January 1, 2014, by Sec. 86 of Ch. 181.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=895.
Text hash
sha256 4a6faa8e0041fa90fc990bafe565967b48a4d59b672b9dae160ec22e4ba8ef9b
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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