Another measure of protection against apartment scammers has been invented in Russia

Rosreestr supported the introduction of a self-ban on real estate transactions. Such a bill was proposed by a member of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services, Deputy Sergei Kolunov. The purpose of this initiative is to try to protect citizens from the actions of scammers. Will legislators be able to solve this problem and what are the weaknesses of the proposal under discussion? «Moscow’s comsomolets» found out from the experts.

68-year-old resident of Ulyanovsk Irina Nikolaevna V., who had worked as an accountant at various enterprises all her life, was looking for part-time work for her retirement. On the Internet, she came across an advertisement for “office hiring” of employees who would simply have to make transactions “in the financial markets.” Deciding that these were the same “operations with numbers” that she had dealt with before retiring, the woman called the company. At the interview, she was offered to “undergo free training,” where they promised to teach her how to “click the mouse correctly.” The company was engaged in transactions on the foreign exchange market, trading was carried out through Internet platforms. During the training, the pensioner was vividly described how easy it is to make money on the foreign exchange market, and then Irina Nikolaevna was told that she needed “initial capital” to open an account. The elderly woman did not have it. Then the company manager offered to provide her with a “tidy sum” on the security of half the cost of her one-room apartment in Ulyanovsk — a modest home for which the woman had earned her entire life. The pensioner agreed. She placed the money she received in her account at a forex company. Needless to say, the elderly woman quickly lost them, losing every penny, and it soon became clear that the real estate transaction she concluded turned out to be not a registration on bail, but an ordinary transaction for the purchase and sale of an apartment. The only thing that saved the pensioner from losing her property was that the apartment had not yet become the property of the lender, since the owner managed to suspend the housing transfer transaction through the court. The apartment was seized. Then there were several trials… Six months later, Irina Nikolaevna finally won back her apartment, but at the same time got into debt to pay off the lawyer.

Similar and even much more dramatic examples are probably known to everyone — when elderly, lonely or marginalized citizens simply disappeared, and their living space went to “black realtors”. In order to protect Russians from the actions of such scammers, the State Duma proposed introducing a self-ban on real estate transactions, similar to the self-ban on loans previously established in Russia. This idea was supported by Rosreestr. It is proposed to establish the ban through the State Services portal or multifunctional centers (MFC). A citizen can remove it at any time in a similar way.

In Russia, it is already possible to block real estate transactions on the government services portal, but to use it, you need a certificate of an enhanced qualified electronic signature, the registration of which can be difficult, for example, for pensioners, which is why a simpler scheme was proposed.

According to the head of the alternative investment management directorate of Alfa Capital Management Company Vladimir Stolnikov, now that all documents are moving to an online format, introducing a self-ban on real estate transactions is quite relevant.

This is the right initiative, just like the self-ban on loans, says Polina Gusyatnikova, senior managing partner of the law firm PG Partners. — At the moment, it is possible to impose a ban on conducting real estate transactions without personal presence, and even this measure has already made it possible to protect a large number of citizens from fraudsters.

However, despite all the advantages, the technical side of implementing such a self-prohibition raises many questions and can lead to inconvenience. According to Ekaterina Kuznetsova, head of the dispute resolution practice at the Intellectual Capital law firm, the following issues are of fundamental importance:

• At what point will the ban need to be lifted — before the transaction is concluded or after, immediately before submitting documents for registration to Rosreestr?
• How can a real estate buyer find out about the existence of a ban before concluding a transaction?
• Will the ban be reflected in the extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate (USRN)?

If information about the ban does not appear in the extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate, then the following situation is possible. The buyer was not warned about the existence of the ban, the seller did not lift the ban and refuses to lift it, Rosreestr did not register the transfer of ownership. It turns out that the buyer did not exercise due diligence when concluding the transaction and incurred costs and losses that fall on him.

It is necessary for the legislator to think through all these details and not put the buyer in a deliberately disadvantageous position, the lawyer emphasized.

source: «Moscow’s comsomolets»