When buying only a room in an apartment, you may encounter a number of difficulties. Ksenia Avers, a real estate expert and head of the Trend House real estate agency, told Izvestia more about them.
She explained that this type of housing has different options: the status of a room in a communal apartment or a share without allocating the status of a room.
In the first case, a person owns a specific room, indicated on the plan, with a certain number, a set area, but the rest of the apartment belongs to all owners of this property on equal rights.
“That is, a person buying a room with the status of a room must understand that no one can enter and use his room, it is his private property, but the kitchen, corridor, bathroom, this will all be joint property, common areas. If a person wants to make repairs, then his rights will be limited. You can do just “cosmetics” inside, but in order to change any communications, you already need to take written permission from your neighbors. For repairs of common areas and redevelopments, permission from everyone is also required,” the expert emphasized.
In addition, according to her, when selling such housing, neighbors in such properties have a right of first refusal. If the person who owns the room wants to sell it, he will first have to offer to buy it to his neighbors, and they will have a month from receiving written notice of the sale to make a decision.
“If the neighbors do not react in any way within a month, then the owner can sell on the conditions that were in the notice to absolutely any person, but this is wasted time. And if, let’s say, neighbors have property, but the neighbors do not live there, and there is no way to serve notices, then you will have to contact a notary and pay for electronic notices,” Avers added.
She drew attention to the fact that such rooms can be donated, but cannot be mortgaged. As the expert clarified, some banks began to issue mortgages for rooms, and at the same time, managers of financial organizations impose an encumbrance, that is, they take the entire apartment as collateral, and if a person has some kind of problem, the encumbrance will remain on the entire apartment, and the neighbors will no longer They will be able to neither sell nor change their room.
“The next problem is separate personal accounts. Everyone should have their own counter for everything, or the order of division according to common counters should be determined, for example, equally divided by the number of registered ones. And if someone doesn’t pay for utilities, then this debt falls on the entire apartment, on all the co-owners,” said Avers.
In addition to the rooms themselves, many shares are sold on the market, without highlighting the status of the room.
“A share in common law is much worse in status than separate rooms, because a share in the right of an apartment is when a person simply owns, for example, one third of the apartment, but the specific perimeter of this ownership is not defined, the specific area is not determined. That is, all the people who are co-owners of this apartment have the entire apartment on equal rights,” the expert explained.
She noted that in this case, neighbors have the right of first refusal. And if a person buys a share in an apartment, then he must make a document called “the procedure for determining the procedure for using joint property.” When compiling it, several owners specify who specifically owns which part of the apartment, and distribute the rooms among themselves.
“Except for earning money, I wouldn’t recommend buying a room now. There are a lot of new buildings with small areas, but everything is personal property, without connection to other people,” Avers concluded.
Earlier, on January 3, the managing director of the Metrium company, Ruslan Syrtsov, suggested that in Russia at the beginning of 2024, the cost of apartments in new buildings in the mass segment and business class may decrease. Secondary housing will also gradually become cheaper, he predicted. The expert drew attention to the fact that there are still favorable conditions for purchasing housing in a new building in order to save money against the backdrop of economic uncertainty. At the same time, it is advisable to buy secondary housing with cash, without using borrowed funds, Syrtsov expressed his opinion.
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