Registration of land in Russia

Despite the entry into law of the new Land Code in Russia late last year, nothing has changed in practice for those wishing to buy land.

There are two main obstacles to the creation of an effective retail/wholesale property market: proving who owns the land and identifying exactly what and where that land is.

Both obstacles stem from the Soviet era when almost all land was owned by the State. Thus, whether a plot of land was owned by a municipal authority or by the Federal Government made little difference: it was all, in effect, the same thing. Now, those in possession of land will find it difficult to produce a good root of title, a basic requirement of all prospective purchasers.

Because the same entity (the State) owned almost all of the land in the country there was no need to delineate the same into individual land plots. Where any delineation was done, there was no way to register the same.

In an attempt to overcome the second of these obstacles, the Government has decided to register every plot of land in the country (amounting to approximately 1.7 billion hectares). The federal land service, Roszemkadastr, has been ordered to prepare detailed information about each such plot including its value, its type (residential, agricultural, industrial), whether there are any buildings on it and whether there are any claims to it.

Unfortunately, Roszemkadastr has made it clear that it is unable to carry out this task without more technical, financial and, above all, human resources. Presumably in response to these calls, a new Government program is scheduled to start this year to computerize the land and real estate registration system, with additional funding planned.