Buying an apartment by proxy: risks, what is important to know

Buying an apartment by proxy from the buyer is not very common, but is still practiced. This can be done by a person who, due to certain circumstances, does not have the opportunity to independently make a purchase. But buying your own home is a responsible matter and it is important to understand whether such a transaction is safe and what the risks are of buying your new apartment by proxy.

Transaction procedure

In order to get such a desired apartment in your possession, you need to go through the following stages:

Find an apartment.
Inspect the object and select.
Talk to the seller.
Transfer the advance and enter into an advance agreement.
Drawing up a purchase agreement and signing it.
Registration of the agreement.
Receiving keys and drawing up a transfer act.

All this can be done not independently, but through a trusted person; it is important not to leave these matters to chance, but to control them.

Why do you need a power of attorney?

With a power of attorney, you can do anything you want, including purchasing an apartment. Another reason why it is practiced is the need for certain actions to be carried out by a professional. For example, when buying an apartment by proxy, you can use the services of a realtor.

The execution of such a document is always carried out in writing, and if it concerns a real estate transaction, it is also certified by a notary.

It is convenient to draw up a document for a trusted person when purchasing an apartment:

In another city.
If your health does not allow you to personally engage in all stages.
There is no time and/or desire to deal with paperwork.

It is most convenient to entrust these processes to a realtor or relative.

Important! The husband can entrust such a process to his wife or vice versa, but for this, if the marriage is officially registered, consent to the purchase is required.

How to arrange the transfer of a car without a buyer?

In practice, several options for processing a transaction are possible:

Through an interim sales agreement . In this case, the buyer's representative first registers the car in his name using a sales contract, and then sells the car to the buyer under another contract. Disadvantages of this scheme: an additional column in the PTS will be used, the intermediary will have to file a tax return next year (there will be no need to pay tax if both contracts are concluded for the same amount).
Using a power of attorney . In this case, the buyer issues a power of attorney to the intermediary and the intermediary enters into a sales contract on behalf of the buyer.

The choice of option depends on the specific life situation.

Registration procedure

Such an important document needs to be drawn up by a notary. In order for another person to be able to not only select but also prepare documents for real estate, it is necessary to provide the following documents:

A document about ownership from the current owner of the selected living space.
Your passport and that of your authorized representative.
Explanation of the purpose of drawing up a power of attorney. That is, for which actions permission is issued.
Document confirming payment of state duty.

Since the authorized person can have many actions, several copies should be drawn up at once, which must also be certified. This will prevent further slowdown of the process.

The document must contain the following mandatory details:

Date and place of compilation.
Passport details of the buyer and the trustee.
Purpose of creating a power of attorney.
Deadline for issuing the document. Now there is no deadline, as there was before at 3 years. If the validity period is not specified, it defaults to 1 year.
The possibility of reassignment, that is, the preparation by a trusted person of a power of attorney for a third party.

What is important to consider when buying a car under a power of attorney?

If a car enthusiast nevertheless decides to buy a car “through a notary,” then Autocode recommends providing the following points:

Make sure that the seller is the sole owner of the vehicle.
Check the technical specifications for the vehicle you are selling.
Be sure to draw up a receipt for the transfer of funds, this will protect against premature revocation of the general power of attorney.
Don't forget to have the receipt certified by a notary, otherwise it will be invalid.

When drawing up a power of attorney, carefully read the document, make sure that there are no clauses limiting the use and disposal of the power of attorney. Also make sure that the notary has a copy of the document. This is very important, since in the future this document will help the buyer in resolving disputes.

How to purchase a used car - we talked about the general transaction procedure in this material. If you are going to take out a loan to purchase a car, choose the bank offer with the lowest interest rate. Here you can apply for an MTPL policy without visiting the office and with a benefit of up to 3,000 rubles.

Which power of attorney is considered invalid?

In order for all actions to be carried out without delay, it is important to check whether everything with the power of attorney is correct and whether there will be a reason to invalidate it and challenge the fact of receipt of the purchased property. Important standards:

Availability of registration date.
It must not be expired.
The period is not specified and more than 1 year has passed from the date of registration.
The principal died.
The power of attorney has been revoked.

[smartcontrol_youtube_shortcode key=”Purchase of an apartment by proxy” cnt=”1″ col=”1″ shls=”true”]

The risk of purchase powers

In order not to risk either money or property, you need to follow some tips when making such a purchase:

You must always hand over money to the seller in person. For such a task, you can take time off from work or come to another city.
Check the extract from Rosreestr, which indicates the encumbrances. It is important to see the date it was received. If you can’t do this in person, there is always the Internet, you should ask a trusted person to demonstrate this document, for example, through a webcam.
It is important to make sure with your own eyes that the owner of the apartment is the only one; in this case, the rule applies: trust, but verify.
The power of attorney must state that purchasing under a preliminary agreement is prohibited. This is a risk rather on the part of an unscrupulous seller. This fraud is practiced when the “owner” does not yet have documents for the apartment, but he is already trying to sell it. This often happens during inheritance. This is fraught with the appearance of heirs who will want to sue the apartment.

[smartcontrol_youtube_shortcode key=”Purchase of an apartment by proxy from the buyer” cnt=”1″ col=”1″ shls=”true”]

Buying an apartment by proxy: how to protect yourself from possible risks?

We have already talked about the purchase of housing sold by proxy and the risks that such transactions pose. If there is no desire to receive a subpoena and waste time, nerves and money on litigation, then it is better to refuse such transactions, even if they seem completely harmless, and the price is more than attractive. But if the buyer is still willing to take a risk, he needs to take precautions.

To begin with, “Real Estate Magazine MetrInfo.Ru” suggests that you read our previous article on this topic: “Purchasing an apartment by proxy: typical risks and frauds.” And with those who are already in the know, let’s move on to the next aspect - security measures when transactions with a power of attorney.

How to protect yourself when buying an apartment sold by proxy, says Elena Zhdanova, real estate lawyer, managing partner of the law firm “Pravo. Real estate. Family" .

Safety rules: meeting with the owner, checking with a notary To protect yourself from fraudulent schemes in transactions with powers of attorney, first of all, you need to communicate with the owner of the property . Without this, you should not buy a home, even in cases where, according to the trustee, he is very ill; it is better to wait until the trustee gets better and meet with him. You can go to his home or to the hospital. And if the owner lives abroad, it is better to ask a trusted person or a real estate company that sells housing for the owner to come (this is impossible only in rare cases). You must insist on such a meeting, even if the realtors say that the seller urgently needs money, or that this transaction is part of an alternative chain and everything will fall apart because of the owner’s expectations. Only by seeing the seller in person can you understand how adequate he is and whether he really wants to sell the property, and also why he entrusted the sale to a third party. Naturally, it is worth buying a home only when the information received does not raise any questions.

If there is no catch, then the real estate company and the authorized representative are sympathetic to the buyer’s wishes, the homeowner agrees to a meeting, and all participants in the alternative are ready to wait: for those who really want to make a deal, there is nothing to worry about, because there is a queue of Buyers and sellers are generally not worth it. But if they don’t let you meet with the owner, and even rush the deal, this is a reason to think about its purity, in which case the risk of further problems is very high.

It is also necessary to check the notary who certified the power of attorney. See if such a notary actually exists, and if he is excluded from the list of notaries. Such information is not difficult to obtain - it is publicly available in the notary chamber. But it is, alas, almost impossible to check the power of attorney itself: under what circumstances it was issued, what documents were presented. Of course, you can contact a notary with such a request, but according to the law on notaries, he does not have the right to disclose any information about his notarial affairs without a court decision. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare in advance for a possible trial in order to obtain the status of a bona fide purchaser and remain in the acquired property.

For example, you need to request a certificate from a trusted person or owner stating that the owner of the apartment is not registered with a drug treatment or psychoneurological department . Such documents can play into the hands of the buyer in court; he will be considered in good faith because he tried to protect himself. However, it is worth noting that these certificates can also be fake. In order not to be deceived, you need to know that such documents (at least to Muscovites) are issued at the place of registration, i.e. If a person is registered in one district, he will not be given a certificate in another. Thus, when the owner of the property being sold is from one area, and the certificate is from another, this should be alarming. In addition, the certificates bear the stamp and signature of the doctor; using this data, you can and should check their authenticity, for example, find out at the clinic if there is such a doctor, talk to him, etc. Medical institutions, of course, are not required to provide such information, but lawyers and attorneys, as a rule, are notified.

It is necessary to check the authorized person and look at his passport . It should not be fake (an obvious fake can be recognized), but it should be Russian - so there is at least some confidence that he is not a migrant worker and will not run away as easily as, for example, a holder of Ukrainian citizenship. It would also be useful to register in the same city or region where the apartment for sale is located (for Moscow, Moscow registration is accordingly better).

In addition, it is better for the buyer that the power of attorney is not general , and not “with the right to receive money,” but without this right, so that the owner himself receives the money. And even if the power of attorney is full, you must try to protect yourself by transferring the money not to the authorized person, but to the seller. And if this is not possible, you must ask the trustee to take a receipt from the owner confirming that the seller received such and such an amount from such and such a buyer, and date it to the date of the transaction. A receipt must be required even when the owner is ready to sell, but the exact date of the transaction is not yet known and he is already leaving.

Of course, on the day of signing the purchase and sale agreement, the authorized person is not obliged to transfer the receipt to the buyer, because he may change his mind, so the document must be put in a box along with the money, and when the transaction is completed, the buyer will be able to pick it up - this way he will have proof that the owner of the apartment received the amount due to him. True, a receipt can also be written by a fraudster, especially if the buyer has not seen the seller and is not familiar with his handwriting. And then the apartment owner will be able to challenge this document. And it’s even more easy to challenge a printed receipt, because an expert will not be able to establish its authenticity. Therefore, you should definitely not agree to such a document; the ideal option is for the owner to write a receipt in front of the buyer.

It is much more reliable if the power of attorney is specific : I authorize the sale of such and such an apartment at a price not lower than such and such an amount. If the power of attorney states that the principal allows the apartment to be sold at any price under any conditions (and this often happens in general powers of attorney), this may become a reason for a dispute between the owner and the holder of the power of attorney. For example, the owner verbally allowed the property to be sold for 5 million rubles, but the trustee sold it for 3 or 4 million. In this case, the trustee can go to court and challenge the deal, and the buyer will have to be nervous and, as a result, may lose the purchased home. And, by the way, the principal and the authorized representative can do this specifically to return the apartment. But it is far from a fact that the buyer will return all his money.

Advice from a lawyer Perhaps the most effective way to protect yourself from scammers and troubles is to contact a lawyer. In principle, serious realtors can check the purity of the transaction; they usually have a legal department, but it is better to contact an independent specialist so that he can go through the entire chain of transactions that were made with this property. Realtors have a goal to buy or sell, they get money from this, and the faster the transaction goes through, the better for them. Lawyers have a different task, they earn money for consultations and legal expertise, and the more reliable data they provide, protecting the buyer of real estate from scammers, the higher their reputation will be, and therefore the more clients.

As for fees, lawyers charge about 50-60 thousand rubles for checking the purity of a transaction. If there is no money to check the purity of the transaction, you should at least go for a written legal consultation and, having told the circumstances of the proposed transaction, receive the correct algorithm for your actions and advice on what to pay special attention to. This service costs an average of 5-12 thousand rubles. You can also seek the advice of a lawyer already during the transaction process, when suddenly some doubts arise or you are not confident in the correctness of your actions, for example, a lawyer can tell you whether to buy if the seller (and the principal) drinks, or how to put it in a safe deposit box correctly money and take a receipt. Such a small consultation will cost 1.5 - 2, maximum 3 thousand rubles. This is not a lot of money, especially considering that once the deal has already been completed, it is much more difficult to fix everything, and you can lose much more than the cost of the consultation.

It didn’t work out If buyers treat a transaction in which a power of attorney appears, carefully and prudently, analyze the situation, find experienced and respectable realtors and turn to lawyers, problems can almost always be avoided, but in other cases, as a rule, it ends up in court.

The most alarming is the first year after the purchase, since the statute of limitations for real estate transactions is one year; during this period, the former owner or interested parties (his heirs, close relatives) can challenge the transaction. So if you haven’t received a summons to court within a year, you can calm down a little, but you shouldn’t relax completely, since the statute of limitations is determined not from the date of the transaction, but from the moment when the plaintiff could have learned about the illegality and illegality of the purchase and sale. For example, an apartment is sold by proxy by a father who is in a psychoneurological dispensary, and his son, say, a sea captain, comes home and finds out about it five months later. Under such circumstances, he has another year to cancel the deal, confirming with documents the inadequacy of his father and the date of his return.

If the case does end up in court, you should immediately contact a lawyer and defend yourself. Fortunately, there are chances to save the apartment. If the buyer is conscientious: he did not and could not know about the deception, checked the purity of the transaction and tried in every possible way to protect himself, then the court, with a high degree of probability, will leave the property behind him. Moreover, regardless of whether the seller acted intentionally or became a victim of deception and, succumbing to the persuasion of the scammers, wanted to sell the home and issued a power of attorney, fully aware of his actions.

But when a fraudulent scheme was clearly used, i.e. the property was sold by someone who did not have the right to do so (for example, using forged documents or a revoked power of attorney), or the seller was inadequate at the time of issuing the power of attorney, then the transaction is considered a transaction with defects and the buyer, even a conscientious one, loses in court. Moreover, the principle that the only housing cannot be taken away or minors cannot be discharged does not apply here. In any case, the deal is terminated, and everything returns to its original state: the apartment goes to the owner, and the money goes to the buyer. But the money usually disappears along with the scammers, especially since now it’s quite easy to travel abroad. The buyer can write a statement to initiate a criminal case, but even if the scammers are found, as a rule, there is nothing to take from them. Of course, enforcement proceedings begin, but if within three years the defendants (fraudsters) do not have funds (and this happens more often), then the bailiff service returns the writ of execution to the plaintiff due to the impossibility of executing it. The buyer loses both the apartment and his money, as well as time and nerves. To avoid such a turn of events in power of attorney transactions, you need to be especially vigilant and seek legal advice. True, as lawyer Elena Zhdanova notes, not all lawyers deal with housing issues. There are lawyers who claim that they do everything, but everything means qualitatively nothing. There are lawyers for criminal or civil cases, lawyers specializing in arbitration disputes, and there are lawyers for housing issues. You need to contact the latter, and it is better to make inquiries about lawyers, read reviews, etc. It is also necessary to discuss who exactly will represent your interests in court. There are lawyers who have assistants go to court, and there are many examples where a reputable law firm sent to court a very weak lawyer who was not at all versed in the law. This way you can lose the process. In general, choosing a lawyer is a serious matter that requires increased attention.

Real estate market specialists also give their advice to those who decide to purchase housing sold by proxy:

Igor Boachev, General Director of the real estate agency "Aenbi": If you adhere to the basic rules: transfer money through a safe deposit box, indicate the full value of the property in the contract, take a receipt, check the passports of the owner and authorized person and contact only reliable real estate companies, then the security of any transaction can be guarantee. Typically, an agency that is not very well established in the market has a lot of sales by proxy. And if the agency is famous for its reputation, values it, is a member of the Guild of Realtors and has a lawyer on staff, then cases of “dubious transactions” being referred to such a company are insignificant.

Marina Tolstik, managing partner of MIEL – Network of Real Estate Offices: In transactions with a power of attorney, the buyer must check the authenticity of its issuance with a notary or with the owner himself, making sure that the owner is really in front of him. It is particularly difficult to verify a power of attorney issued abroad at a consulate. In this case, the potential buyer of the apartment should make a corresponding request or call the consulate to make sure that the power of attorney has been issued and has not been revoked.

Svetlana Birina, head of the city real estate department: When dealing with a power of attorney, you need to pay attention to how long it was issued in order to exclude the possibility of delay (by the way, expired powers of attorney are not uncommon, especially when they were issued for a short period), you also need to check that it has not been lost whether it is in force due to the death of the citizen who issued it, his recognition as incompetent or missing, and whether it was revoked. You can check the power of attorney yourself with a notary who certifies the transfer of rights for the transaction.

Maria Litinetskaya, General Director: The buyer must meet the seller and personally check his passport and documents. This is the only way to verify the owner’s intentions to sell the apartment. In addition, you can find out from the owner important facts regarding housing: who is registered in the apartment, whether the right of residence for these people will be retained after the sale of the property, whether the rights of minors are violated. To verify the authenticity of documents, it is worth requiring the personal presence of the owner when receiving extracts from house books, Rosreestr, etc. It is also important to pay attention to the age of the principal and his condition, because in the event of his death, the power of attorney will cease to be valid.

Pavel Lepish, General Director: The buyer needs to verify the authenticity of the power of attorney by meeting with the principal and the notary, who can tell whether it has been revoked. It is necessary to check the powers of the authorized persons specified in the power of attorney, their passport details, the powers of the person who issued the power of attorney (whether he is really the owner of the property). If there are concerns about the incapacity or limited legal capacity of the principal, it is necessary to request certificates from the psychoneurological and narcological dispensaries.

Oleg Samoilov, General Director of RELIGHT-Real Estate, Chairman of the RGR Committee for Improving the Regulatory Framework, Coordinator of the Interregional Partnership of Realtors: Before the state registration of the transaction is completed, it is necessary to obtain a notarized statement from the seller that he wishes to sell the apartment under certain conditions, for whereby, by issuing a power of attorney, he instructed his representative to perform a number of actions, that he did not revoke the issued power of attorney and does not intend to do so in the future, that he approves of the actions of his authorized representative, and if he does not transfer the amount of money due to him, he undertakes to resolve the problem directly with the attorney, without making any claims to the buyer.

Inna Ignatkina, director of the Presnya branch: You should be wary when they offer to buy an apartment cheaply with a power of attorney from an elderly person, and the document was issued by a suspicious notary office. This is one of the most common types of deception, which means that in the near future the owner will try to challenge the deal in court. Here, at a minimum, you need to check the information about the power of attorney by visiting a notary office, and the notary himself at the notary chamber.

Vadim Rubtsov, leading specialist at Realtor: The most reliable way to protect yourself is to certify the transfer of ownership rights under the purchase and sale agreement from the same notary who certified the power of attorney.

Irina Shugurova, Deputy Managing Director for Legal Affairs, MIEL - Network of Real Estate Offices: The most important thing when checking a power of attorney is to find a principal. In 99% of cases, the principal can be contacted in one way or another. For example, if the principal is in Moscow or at least within Russia, we visit him or communicate by phone, email, fax and ask him to confirm that the power of attorney has not been revoked. And if the seller is located abroad, it is better to do this by fax.

Alexander Ryumin, commercial director of PREMIER ESTATE LLC: In addition to meeting with the owner, collecting certificates of the seller’s legal capacity and checking the power of attorney with a notary, you can insure the transaction with a power of attorney in an insurance company.

Lev Litovkin, head of the Mitino office: If a power of attorney is used in a transaction, then it must be “fresh”, that is, issued no more than one month ago. Although, by law, the validity period of a power of attorney can be no more than 3 years, over such a long period of time the circumstances surrounding the issuance of the document can change significantly, rendering the document invalid.

And in any case, it is necessary to check the power of attorney according to the register with a notary to see if it has been revoked. Typically, such a check is carried out on the day of the transaction, as well as after its conclusion, to make sure that the document has not been revoked during the registration process.

Source: “Real estate magazine MetrInfo.Ru”

Read in full: https://www.metrinfo.ru/articles/108516.html