Ghosts of the past: should the "garage amnesty" be extended in Russia
The "garage amnesty" in Russia may be extended for another five years. The relevant bill has already been submitted to the State Duma. According to experts, such a decision is an expected step dictated by the objective need of the state. It will make it possible to involve many objects in civil circulation that do not legally exist today. However, any simplified procedure carries risks of abuse. Izvestia has studied the advantages and disadvantages of garage amnesty.
The well-forgotten old
Today, Russia has a simplified procedure for registering rights to individual garages and land plots under them, known as the "garage amnesty." The mechanism allows you to register real estate objects built before December 30, 2004. The law establishing this became effective in September 2021. The norm was designed for five years, and it will expire in 2026.
Vladimir Yakushev, First Vice Speaker of the Federation Council, and Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation, proposed extending the validity period of the simplified procedure. Parliamentarians have already submitted a bill providing for this to the State Duma. If adopted, the garage amnesty will be extended for another five years, until September 1, 2031.
The explanatory note to the new bill clarifies that over 746 thousand garages and land plots under them have been registered in Russia during the operation of the "garage amnesty" mechanism.
The authors of the initiative are confident that the amnesty has proved its effectiveness. Preserving citizens' rights to simplified garage ownership for the next five years should increase the number of legalized facilities.
Coming out of the shadows
When the garage amnesty was launched, the number of unregistered objects, according to Rosreestr estimates, was more than 3.5 million, recalls Sergey Gavrilov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Property, Land and Property Relations. Of these, less than 800 thousand were legalized during the period of the simplified procedure. Such data suggests that the work is far from complete, as the scale of the shadow array continues to number in the millions.
It is difficult to accurately calculate the number of unregistered objects due to the absence of these buildings in official registers, says Sean Betrozov, a lawyer at the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers and a member of the Russian Bar Association. However, an analysis of aerial photography data and municipal registers suggests that the program covered only a small part of the existing fund.
— In large industrial centers and million-plus cities, the proportion of unformulated garages can reach 30-40% of their total number. These are objects that exist physically, connected to networks, but legally represent only a set of building materials on an unspecified territory," the expert points out.
Their shadow position excludes them from the taxation system, and also creates risks for the urban environment, because such areas often turn into uncontrolled areas where fire safety and environmental regulations are not observed, he notes.
— The shadow sector is not only a missed tax base for municipalities, but also a matter of chaotic urban development. An unregistered garage is a "dead" asset: it cannot be legally sold, insured, or inherited," adds Oleg Golov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Federal Structure, Regional Policy, Local Government, and Northern Affairs.
Therefore, the main problem that the state seeks to solve is the involvement in full—fledged civil turnover of many facilities that currently exist only de facto, the parliamentarian believes.
The illusion of deception
Of course, any simplified procedure carries risks of abuse, Oleg Golov admits. One of the main concerns is that unscrupulous citizens may try to legalize fresh unauthorized buildings under the guise of old Soviet garages.
This is a serious violation, because the amnesty is designed for capital garages built before December 30, 2004 and not recognized as unauthorized buildings, recalls Sergey Gavrilov. Therefore, the date, technical plan and comparison with archived data are crucial when registering an object.
Digitalization of Rosreestr and the capabilities of municipalities significantly reduce the risk of abuse, Golov is convinced. Aerial photography of previous years and satellite maps play an important role in the fight against the legalization of the "new building".
— If an empty plot is recorded in the photographs of previous years, any attempts to pass off a new building as a historical object are considered illegal, — says Sean Betrozov.
At the same time, modern garage self-construction is often visible even to the naked eye. It differs from the old buildings in architectural solutions, materials and number of floors, the lawyer lists the criteria. Attempts to pass off a two-storey commercial building as an old garage are already being stopped at the level of visual inspection and analysis of design features.
However, the risk of legalizing new garages in a simplified manner is not the only one. An attempt to falsify evidence of ownership of the object is also possible, since the law allows the use of a wide range of documents that can theoretically be forged, the Izvestia interlocutor does not exclude.
— The most frequent risk is associated with forged certificates of the cooperative and archival papers. He is held back by registration expertise, responsibility for forged materials and the possibility of rejection in case of doubt," explains Gavrilov.
Verification of documentation is not carried out formally today, says Betrozov. Fraud in this area is often stopped at the stage of cadastral work.
— The cadastral engineer is personally and criminally responsible for the accuracy of information in the boundary and technical plans. If a specialist records that the facility was recently built or does not meet the criteria for capital, such an attempt at legalization will be blocked even before submitting documents to the Federal Register, the expert emphasizes.
An additional protection against fraud is the publicity of the process, which is naturally controlled by neighbors in the garage and the board of the cooperative, Betrozov believes. They will quickly notice an attempt to register someone else's or an abandoned garage.
At the same time, land disputes are possible, which does not exclude Heads. However, a simplified procedure is not equal to automatic approval, he recalls.
— If the garage is located on utility networks, public lands, or violates red lines, legalization will be refused. The amnesty will not work here, and this is a crucial moment for the safety of urban infrastructure," the senator draws attention.
Dangerous enterprise
A separate problem for cities and towns is the use of garage rows as business platforms, says Sergey Gavrilov. There are cases when a service, a car wash, or a trading facility is placed in the boxes.
— Since the garage does not legally exist, it is more difficult for regulatory authorities to apply sanctions for violations of land use rules or environmental regulations. In such conditions, business is conducted without paying taxes, without complying with fire safety requirements, and often with illegal connection to the public electricity networks of a cooperative or a city," Sean Betrozov points out the problem.
The organization of illegal stalls and warehouses based on garages is especially common near major transport hubs and in residential areas, which creates an additional burden on infrastructure and causes discontent among local residents, he said.
The presence of a registered property right makes the owner visible to the regulatory authorities, Oleg Golov emphasizes.
"It is much more effective to deal with violations in the legal field than to try to regulate activities in a self—building complex that formally does not have a master," the senator believes.
Situations where, according to documents, the facility passes as a garage for storing a car, but in fact a cafe or workshop is operating there, become grounds for bringing to administrative responsibility for using the site for other purposes, which helps in the fight against illegal business, explains Betrozov.
Demand creates supply
The extension of the "garage amnesty" can be called a signal of the consistency of government policy, Oleg Golov believes. People are given the opportunity to put their documents in order, protect their property and become full-fledged participants in legal relations. At the same time, the mechanisms for screening out illegal buildings from the state remain in place and are working successfully, the senator emphasizes.
Statistics on the implementation of the simplified procedure indicate a high demand for this mechanism among the population, says Sean Betrozov. Registrations of garages and land under them are steadily growing, which is explained by the gradual awareness of citizens and simplification of internal bureaucratic procedures.
"The successful experience of hundreds of thousands of owners has become a catalyst for those who previously doubted the effectiveness of the law, which led to the need to extend the duration of the program to complete the processes initiated nationwide," the lawyer is convinced.
The decision to prolong the "garage amnesty" is an expected step dictated not by bureaucratic inertia, but by the objective situation in the state, Golov confirms. There is still a steady demand in society for the legalization of garages and land plots, and the five-year deadline initially set aside proved insufficient to process the accumulated property over the decades.
The extension of the amnesty is also necessary in order to bring to registration the objects for which the deadlines have been delayed due to surveying, drawing up technical plans and searching for old grounds, notes Sergey Gavrilov. Many owners have encountered difficulties at the stage of collecting archival evidence, because often documents from the Soviet period are in poor condition or transferred to archives, access to which requires a long time, Betrozov agrees.
—Stopping the program in 2026 will leave behind hundreds of thousands of people who have already started the registration process, spent money on surveying, but did not have time to receive the final extract from the register," the expert warns.
In addition, some of those wishing to take ownership of the objects were hampered by a lack of understanding of the procedure at the initial stages, says Sofya Lukinova, head of the legal department at the VMT Consult agency. With the experience gained during the amnesty period, it will be easier to register.
Sometimes the process is complicated by the need to complete complex cadastral works initiated by municipalities, adds Betrozov. It is often more efficient to arrange not just one specific garage, but the entire array at once.
"This requires coordination of the actions of hundreds of people, which, given the legal illiteracy or lack of contacts of the owners of abandoned boxes, turns into a long—term project," the lawyer explains.
The cancellation of the program means the massive demolition of garages considered illegal by the fund, and attempts to use and sell land on which unregistered property is located, Lukinova is convinced.
— And this is fraught with an increase in social tension and lawsuits, — warns the interlocutor of Izvestia.
Thus, the extension of the "garage amnesty" is beneficial for both citizens and the state. This will allow owners to manage their property without gray schemes, Gavrilov emphasizes. And at the state level, in his opinion, the advantage is an increase in the number of registered facilities and a decrease in disputes over territories.
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