Registration of property rights after the loss of title documents

Galyna owns an apartment in Zaporizhzhia. Due to the intensification of hostilities in the region, she was forced to leave her city. Upon returning to the city, Ms. Halyna saw that her apartment had been slightly damaged, including the windows as a result of one of the shelling. At the same time, she was offered to buy her apartment and sought advice from a notary.

The notary refused to formalize the sale of the apartment because of the lack of information about the ownership in the State Register of Property Rights (SRPR), a modern register that should contain information about the ownership of real estate. The information could not be entered due to the lack of original title documents: the woman had lost these documents during a forced move. The document confirming her ownership of the apartment was a purchase and sale agreement certified by the commodity exchange.

The lawyer of the NGO “STEP”, a DRC partner, provided step-by-step advice to Halyna on the possible procedure and helped her to draw up an application to the Center for Administrative Services (CAS) for state registration of ownership, which, in turn, made a request to the Bureau of Technical Inventory (BTI) to obtain information and copies of ownership documents from the materials of the inventory file for the real estate object. The lawyer also accompanied the woman during the procedure of applying to the state registrar of the ASC, from where she received a response with copies of the necessary documents from the BTI, which became the basis for entering information about the apartment in the register.

As a result of the work done, Ms. Halyna received an extract from the State Register of Property Rights in respect of her apartment and now has a legal opportunity to exercise her rights as an owner.

The free legal aid in Zaporizhzhia region was made possible thanks to the cooperation of the NGO “STEP” with the Danish Refugee Council and funding from the European Union's humanitarian aid.