MINSK, 25 March (BelTA) – On 24 March Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko signed decree No. 116 “On alienation of residential buildings in rural areas and improvement of handling of empty houses”, BelTA learned from the press service of the head of state.
The document makes it easier for owners to alienate their residential property in rural settlements and towns of district subordination. The document applies to houses built before 8 May 2003 (the date of entry into force of the law “On state registration of real estate, rights to it and transactions with it”). Such houses can be alienated without presenting ownership documents, provided that information about them is registered with a rural executive committee or provided this property was built on land plots allocated in accordance with the law (regardless of state registration of rights to these land plots).
Alienation agreements shall be registered by local executive committees free of charge, while buyers shall be responsible for formalizing ownership documents for this property and land plots.
The decree also creates conditions for reactivation of residential buildings that have been empty for three years or longer or are in emergency condition, as well as the land plots they occupy. Executive committees shall be guided by an appropriate algorithm that will help them identify such houses and include them in the Uniform Register of Empty Houses. Access to this database will be provided to those interested free of charge.
Executive committees will be able to auction off empty residential buildings recognized by the court as ownerless and transferred to the ownership of an administrative-territorial unit. They will be put up for sale at their market value, however their price might be reduced to one base amount. Regional executive committees are authorized to determine settlements where empty houses can be sold for one base amount right away. The buyer of such houses will be offered an installment plan of up to three years, if needed, without indexation of payments.
The demolition of unusable idle houses (provided they have no more than two floors) is allowed without the development of appropriate design documentation.
