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New Rules of Real Estate Registration. Risks for the Owner and the Buyer

Date of publication: 10 January 2013

Maksym Kopeychykov, Partner, Attorney at Law

Source: Forbes

The new procedure is intended to make life of buyers and sellers of real estate easier. Currently, the ownership right is registered with issuance of the certificate and, in fact, it is registered by the registration authorities of the State Registration Service at the same time.

All previously registered rights to real estate are recognized, thus, there is no need to rush to the State Register of Ukraine and re-register the rights.

In the secondary market, when making new deals or coming into inheritance, the registrar will have access to the data of the three previously existing registries. It will help to avoid additional bureaucratic delays. Difficulties can arise only if the rights to the objects were not recorded in these registries. Then the transactions will be carried out on the basis of an extract from the BTI archives (however, the mechanism has not been formalized completely yet). It, in turn, presupposes a visit to the BTI, or, if the latter is abolished, to the State Archive.

Sure, it is assumed that the employees of the State Register of Ukraine will pay particular attention to the objects for which there are court decisions, or agreements on which were concluded ten or more years ago in a written form without notarization. However, there is no guarantee that it will prevent abuse. It shall be remembered that the more stringent requirements to the inspection of documents regarding such objects are not envisaged by the regulations, so we cannot rule out attempts of abuse, fraud and a new wave of hostile takeovers of real estate.