Any purchase of real estate is a complex agreement, the signing of which must be approached with proper preparation.
There are two options for buying the real estate on the market – investment at the construction stage (or even before it begins) or buying completed and registered real estate on the secondary market.
Developers offer to formalize investment in construction in various ways, in particular, by concluding a construction fund financing agreement, purchasing property rights to the object, concluding a preliminary sales agreement, etc. All of them contain various risks, and in some cases – a difficult way of acquiring the right of ownership, starting from the person who received the construction permit and ending with the final buyer.
In such a case, the contract concluded by the buyer with the developer or his representative should be analyzed in detail by lawyers in order to prevent and avoid the risks of losing funds, not getting the object in ownership or becoming a victim of fraud.
Together with the contract, you need to examine all the documents that grant the right to build, such as:
- the right to use a land plot;
- availability of urban planning conditions;
- permission to start construction;
- title documents of the developer company.
Most of the listed documents must be provided for inspection in the original (except for those placed in public state registers).
In addition, it is worth checking court records to find out whether this developer and the specific object have a negative history and/or open proceedings that could lead to negative consequences.
On the modern Ukrainian real estate market, the developer’s reputation remains an important factor in determining the riskiness of real estate transactions, since even complete order in the construction documents and adequate terms of the contract do not protect investors 100% from possible risks caused by the developer’s bankruptcy or fraud. It is important to minimize such risks before concluding the agreement, and the specialists of the Smartsolutions team will help you with this.
Buying real estate on the secondary market on the one hand is a somewhat simpler transaction, since the seller will come to the notary to sign with an extract from the state register of property rights to real estate, and the notary will confirm his ownership with an up-to-date extract immediately before signing the agreement. This means that the buyer does not have to worry about the legality of the construction, and does not need to study the schemes of acquiring the right of ownership and risk investing in real estate that is still only planned on paper.
However, on the other hand, buying real estate on the secondary market means that this object may have had previous owners, and the legality and correctness of their alienation of the object and its acquisition by the current owner can directly affect the legality of the acquisition of this object.
The court register contains many cases in which people are demanded from the ownership of an apartment, because one of the previous owner claims that he or she did not sell such an apartment, and did not know anything about the sale, is the legal owner and wants to get his property back. In such a case, the person to whom the real estate is registered on the date of filing the claim will have to answer. And in the worst case, such a person will be left without real estate and without the funds paid for it. A clear signal to check the history of a property is that it has been resold multiple times within a short period of time.
In order to avoid such situations, it is worth studying in detail the documents confirming the ownership of the object, and it should be not only an extract from the real estate register but also a contract, a court decision, a certificate of the right to inheritance, on the basis of which the seller acquired such a right.
It is also necessary to review the real estate register and also the register of court decisions to make sure of the legality of the agreement you intend to conclude and to make sure that the previous alienations took place in a legal manner.
The Smartsolutions team is always ready to provide professional legal advice on issues related to the purchase of real estate, and provide professional support at meetings and when signing any documents related to such an agreement. And so that you do not have any questions about which documents to ask the seller, which registers to check and what to pay attention to when buying a real estate, we offer qualified legal support and full communication with the seller.
