Why pay a commission to intermediaries when you can buy a land plot directly from the owner. In addition, hiring an agency does not guarantee you a result. In fact, a lawyer is only needed to draw up a purchase and sale agreement, and everything else can be done independently. Below I will tell you step by step how to buy land from individuals and legal entities directly.
Step 1 – make sure you buy the land from the owner
After you have chosen a land plot for yourself, you can proceed to the legal side of the purchase and registration of the transaction in Rosreestr.
To begin with, I recommend documenting to make sure that the person who introduced himself to you as the owner is the actual and only owner of the land plot, that the land has not been previously sold and is not under arrest or encumbrance. Rosreestr provides such information only on a paid basis, but you can send an official request to the USRN without leaving your home.
Please note that Rosreestr sends extracts from the USRN within 3 days (there are delays). If you want to get information about the owner faster, then I recommend ordering extracts directly through the Rosreestr API – this way you will receive a document within a day. The cost is the same – 250 rubles, the official data is from the USRN Rosreestr and is confirmed by the electronic digital signature of the registrar (EDS).
Step 2 – check the documents for the land plot
Here are the documents you need when buying a land plot:
Check the seller’s passport data with the data specified in the extract from the USRN. I do not advise buying a land plot if the owner has not yet been established, since unsettled boundaries or unpaid tax may arise during the transaction.
- If the seller is a legal entity – request statutory documents and check the legal capacity on the website of the Federal Tax Service.
- Check – the same cadastral number in all documents and whether the land category is indicated correctly.
- If the seller is married, he must have the notarized consent of the spouse to sell. The deal will not take place without this paper.
- Do not be lazy, measure the land plot with at least a ruler on Yandex Maps and compare it with the numbers in the documents. The area must match. There are cases when the rights were formalized before an illegal agreement on the division of a land plot between the owners took place.
Step 3 – leave a deposit to the seller
Before entering into any financial relationship with the seller, I recommend that you get the maximum discount from him, then look for new options for a few more days and only after that leave a deposit.
Externally, the deposit and the advance payment are very similar (they confirm the intention to carry out the transaction), but they have a number of differences:
Advance payment in case of default by the buyer or seller of their obligations must be returned to the buyer. Although the conditions are considered tacit, they must be spelled out in the purchase and sale agreement, otherwise, the advance payment can not be returned, and I would not count on “gentlemen’s agreements”.
In the event that a deposit is indicated in the contract and you (the buyer) refused the transaction, then the deposit will not be returned to you, and if the seller refused the transaction, he will be obliged to return the deposit in double size to you.
Any deposit must be issued in the form of a receipt, or better in the form of a preliminary purchase and sale agreement.
Step 4 – complete the purchase of a land plot in Rosreestr
The procedure for buying a land plot from the owner is as follows:
- Make an appointment with the seller at the MFC “My Documents” in your city;
- Take a coupon for filing documents for registration of rights;
- While you are waiting for your turn, carefully read the contract of purchase and sale of the land plot (prepared and paid by the seller);
- Pay the state fee for the registration of rights and make a copy of the payment receipt;
- When the electronic queue comes up, go to the registration desk, sign the purchase agreement in 3 copies (make sure that the blue pen is written next to the seller’s signature: “I received the money in the amount of *** USD in full”) and give the rest of the documents to the registrar. I also recommend transferring money in the presence of the registrar. If the amount in the contract is underestimated (for example, when the land is owned for less than three years), take a receipt from the seller for the rest of the amount;
- This concludes the deal. If everything is done correctly, then in 14 days, in the same place in the MFC, you will receive an agreement registered with RosReestr and become the new owner of the land plot.
Reasons for the suspension of registration of a land plot
The reason for limiting rights may be the following:
- Court order to seize property;
- Private or public easement on real estate;
- A mortgage loan in which the land acts as a guarantee of payments;
- Collateral obligations;
- The seller’s outstanding tax arrears;
- Trust property management;
- Lease of land, including special purpose (protective and sanitary zones, forest fund, and agricultural land), which are of interest to the state;
- Concession agreement (agreement with the state on the paid transfer of land for a certain period of use).
Risks when buying a land plot
The rush to buy often turns into problems with registration claims for the property of third parties and other troubles. Here are just a few of the existing risk groups when buying a land plot:
The bad faith of the seller
It happens that in order to accelerate the sale, the seller or real estate agency suppresses important circumstances. For example, a purchased land plot may belong to forest land and cannot be sold in principle. In this case, you can only count on rent.
Sometimes the seller does not warn the buyer about the land category. For example, agricultural land cannot be used for industrial purposes, and the buyer has to separately deal with the transfer of the site to another category. The land may be seized arbitrarily, and there are simply no rights to it by law.
The site may be under arrest, a ban on the sale, or sold several times (usually with old type acts without cadastral numbers). Fraudsters often use fake property certificates (duplicates, not valid, etc.), so the Russian government decided to cancel them. Since 2016, only an extract from the USRN will be able to confirm ownership.
Careless paperwork
The compiled documents sometimes do not match the data of the cadastral passport in size. Often, when concluding a contract, they forget about the interests of third parties (spouse, spouse) who have a property right to land, if it was acquired in marriage. If a minor has rights to land, then the agreement requires the consent of the guardians and trustees.
Carelessness
There are times when, after the transaction, the buyer receives a completely different plot. They showed one but sold another – worse. Be careful – make sure that the cadastral numbers in the documents correspond to the areas that you look at the terrain. To play it safe, ask the seller for a cadastral passport, the removal of the boundaries of the land plot on the ground, and use the KadastrRU mobile application with geolocation.
Conclusions
Due to the pace of development of the infrastructure of the urban outskirts, the cost of land plots is growing rapidly, but along with the price, the risks also grow;
For self-purchase, you need to have a minimum understanding of the legal intricacies and have free time for paperwork;
There is a threat of multiple resales of property rights, according to acts of old samples, as well as resale of land plots without cadastral numbers, so the legal purity of the property is checked before the purchase in advance;
The easiest and fastest way to documentarily verify the ownership of the owner, as well as to check the presence of encumbrances on the land plot (arrest, pledge, mortgage, etc.) is to order an extract from the USRN.