This building was built partly on usurped land and cannot be legalized under the new law. The investor did not want to appear on camera, but he told us that a court case is underway in which he disputes that he built on someone else's land and claims that it has belonged to his family for generations.
If the court rules in his favor, only then will the owners of the apartments in this building be able to sell them. But in the event of a negative court decision, they will not be able to do so...
This is just one of the situations where citizens are prevented from selling an apartment due to the investor's negligence or fault. Notaries also cite other situations
"There is no building permit, secondly - exceeding the permit, thirdly - there is no use permit, building on someone else's land and there are still these encumbrances that are such that notaries cannot conclude contracts, which has caused alarm among citizens who cannot dispose of their property," explains Darko Ćurić from the Notary Chamber.
The most common situation is when a building exceeds the building permit due to an addition, expansion, or some other intervention. In that case, all the apartments in it are out of circulation, meaning they cannot be sold.
"If it says - exceeding the permit, say the fourth floor, or exceeding the permit for such and such apartment, then that prohibition only applies to that part of the building. However, a large number only have the burden of exceeding the building permit written down without specifying which part it applies to, and then all tenants are in trouble, even those who came to the apartment completely legally and which was built in accordance with the regulations and the project," Ćurić points out.
Ćurić says he understands the state's need to stop illegal construction and thus protect space as its greatest resource, but the right of citizens to fully dispose of their property is also at risk here. The solution, he says, could be a ban on alienation that would apply only to buildings built after the new Law on the Legalization of Illegal Buildings came into force in August this year.
However, the relevant ministry is currently ruling out such a possibility:
"According to the Law on the Legalization of Illegal Buildings, it is not allowed to trade in real estate that has encumbrances registered in the real estate register: they do not have a final report on professional supervision, they do not have a construction application, they were built without a building permit or the building permit was exceeded, they were built on someone else's land," they say in the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property.
It is not known how many residential properties are currently out of business and how much money the state is losing from not collecting real estate transfer taxes.
However, if we take into account the fact that, while the previous one was in force, over 60.000 requests were submitted for the legalization of illegally constructed buildings, the Notary Chamber estimates that the total number of such buildings could now be up to 100.000.
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