NO NEED FOR FORM NO. 1

Real estate registration, a sphere of activity much needed by ordinary citizens, has been upgraded in Azerbaijan with the help of IT and modern administration systems. Today Azerbaijan gets one of the best results in the world in this field.

Currently, registration of property in Azerbaijan involves four procedures; this process itself takes 11 days, while on average throughout the region six procedures are required and it takes 26.5 days, at a cost of 2.8 per cent of the value of the property. Proceeding from this, in the report of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), "Doing Business-2014", which evaluates 189 countries according to 10 different indices, Azerbaijan has been rated 13th on the real estate register. By comparison, of the neighbouring countries Russia was rated 17th, Turkey 50th and Iran 168th.

It has got easier

Simplifying the property registration procedure has naturally cut down the time this takes. Now citizens can obtain a copy of their registered property rights in just seven days and get information about property in just one day. A National System of Real Estate Registration has been set up, using the latest IT and a single corporate computer network. Sixteen services provided by the State Committee on Property Issues have now gone on-line, considerably speeding up this process even further. This paper-less operation has made it possible to carry out real estate registration on-line. Being able to make on-line applications has raised the hope that the process may become even more efficient; the total number of on-line applications to the State Committee is close to 7,000.

Registration documents have also been issued for more than 113,000 properties, in the course of compiling an inventory of real estate objects.

On-line processing has made real estate registration in Azerbaijan faster. Whereas 147,000 properties were registered in the country in 2011, in 2012 151,000 were registered, and from January to September 2013 something like 130,000 were registered.

On-line registration of [property] rights should make the registration procedure much simpler, get rid of the impediments and make life much easier for citizens, thus encouraging more people to use this faster on-line state service in the future.

Moreover, the on-line procedure will cut down the time needed for registration and reduce the state's expenditure on storing a large number of hard-copy documents. This programme is also expected to be of direct financial benefit, in that it will provide a boost to the budget owing to greater efficiency in managing land resources. 

No more Form No.1

Apart from that, within the IT services programme, Azerbaijan's State Committee on Property Issues is to start to provide property-related information in real time from the beginning of next year, in particular details of the requirements (ensuing from registered laws). Thus, the somewhat difficult process of obtaining what people call Form No. 1 has come to an end; it will no longer be a requirement when registering documents. 

State Committee Deputy Chairman Rafiq Calilov has stated that the first stages in setting up on-line communications with the notaries' offices responsible for the legal registration of real estate are currently being undertaken. Besides this, a new mechanism has been devised for the exchange of information between the notaries' offices and the provincial administrations of the State Committee, which will make it possible to considerably reduce the time that citizens have to spend obtaining the relevant information and copies from the State Real Estate Register. 

After work has been completed on setting up a single digital cadastre centre, which is scheduled to start operating by the end of 2014, the purchase and sale of property in Azerbaijan will be made possible almost completely on-line. In the first stage in this procedure, which is to be used from January next year, citizens will be able to apply to the notaries' offices, which, in their turn, will be able to carry out the purchase and selling operation in a real-time regime, once they have consulted the State Committee's IT centre.

But this is not all. Rafiq Calilov has also stated that another innovation is being introduced in the first quarter of 2014. Citizens who wish to obtain information regarding a second residence, will also be able to use a notary to do this. Once a citizen has applied to the notaries' offices, he or she will be able to register the application and pay the duty. The notaries' offices will email the documents to the State Committee's provincial administrations. The applicant will then only have to go to his local provincial administration once to obtain the ready copy.

These measures will make the registration procedure much simpler, more efficient and transparent, cutting down the registration time so that less time will be wasted on  registering documentation. .Besides, another couple of innovations are being introduced to make citizens' lives considerably easier: in accordance with amendments to the law "On state duties", the charges for eliminating technical faults in registration, such as the renaming of streets, avenues, squares, changes of the address of real estate objects belonging to legal entities.

Of late, the procedures for liquidating legal entities have also been considerably simplified and for the first time deadlines have been set for their liquidation.

In accordance with changes in the Civil Code, the long-term and formal procedures involved in liquidating legal entities have been abolished. No more than one year is now required for the liquidation of legal entities in the event of financial and other problems arising. Also, for the first time the voluntary liquidation of legal entities, which is common international practice, has been introduced. The registration of amendments by branches and representatives of foreign legal entities must now be completed within two days, and those of local societies and limited companies immediately for on-line applications and in one day for ordinary applications. 

These measures are being conducted as part of the setting up a unified system of registration of property rights and a cadastre inventory. Thus, it is expected that these steps will make it possible to cut down the queues and lighten the workload of the departments of the State Committee on Property Issues, which will make life easier for the public at large. These measures are mainly needed first and foremost to make the state services offered to citizens more accessible.

You see, not so long ago real estate dealings used to take rather a long time and involved a lot of stress and of course expense too.