26.01.09

Now individuals and companies can complete all real estate registration procedures in one office – The Federal Registration Service (Rosregistratsia). To prevent corruption, the department receiving the application will be separated from that which finalizes decisions on the paperwork. The officer who accepts the application will only confirm that all necessary documents are submitted, then they will be delivered to the next department.

President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed a proposal to create a new superagency based on the existing Federal Property Management Agency (Rosimushestvo). He also abolished a separate agency which registered land for tax purposes, the Federal Real Estate Cadastre Agency (Rosnedvizhimost) and Federal Geodesy and Cartography Agency (Roskartografia), whose functions will be adopted by Rosregistratsia.

In May 2008, Medvedev gave orders to merge all three agencies into the structure of the Federal Registration Service (Rosregistratsia), which was supposed to accept management over state-owned real estate property and land, oversee the privatization of these objects and register ownership rights. The integration was to be completed by October 1, but, in reality, the structure was merged only with the Russian Federal Property Fund, and its former head – Yuri Petrov – took charge over Rosimushestvo.

According to a Rosimushestvo official, integration of the three agencies ran into several problems. They have over 100 000 employees in almost all regions of the RF, and he considers it should not be burdened with the registration and record-keeping of private property.

According to the President’s order, the new agency must organize a unified system of property tax and registration records.

“The goal is to make registration and record services user-friendly, unlike it is now,” explained Igor Manylov, who is overseeing this project. According to him, many regional offices will become universal, allowing their clients to register their property rights and tax obligation in one place.

Due to the small number of property transactions, now is a good time for this reform. Integration of agencies will allow all land and apartment transactions to be processed in one registration office, which will simplify the procedures. However, it will likely create longer waiting lines.

A unified electronic property database is to be created by 2011. Some information will be available to the public for free, some for an additional fee. According to Igor Manylov, charging for the agency's information services will provide half of the agency’s budget.  At this time the cumulative budget of the three agencies exceeds 30 billion rubles.

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Source: “Vedomosti”