Azerbaijan unveils electronic property registration service

By Vusala Abbasova - AzerNews 

A new online system will simplify the procedure of real estate registration for Azerbaijani citizens.

After having signed and notarized a real estate purchase contract, citizens and legal entities will no longer need to revisit the registrar for documentation. The new paperless system will make it possible to register real estate online.

This new online service was unveiled by Rafig Jalilov, the Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Property Affairs. It will minimize both registration time and interactions between citizens and bureaucrats.

In his remarks, Jalilov said that the State Committee for Property Affairs introduced the new online service as a part of the National System of Real Estate Registration and is aided by the World Bank's Real Estate Registration Project in Azerbaijan.

After signing a real estate purchase contract, the National System of Real Estate Registration will make this information available for citizens in both electronic and paper form.

The National System of Real Estate Registration may provide an online payment system for state fees to further simply the registration procedure, added Jalilov.

Jalilov hopes that the online system will simplify the registration procedure, get rid of impediments to obtaining application information, and make life much easier for citizens, all of which will favor property development in Azerbaijan.

The State Property Committee has processed more than 75,000 electronic requests in 2015. More than 220,000 physical and legal entities have turned to the Committee for help thus far this year.

Currently, the Committee provides 3 SMS and 31 electronic services, 27 of which are interactive and 4 are informative.

Generally, 21 electronic services are related to property registration, while 10 electronic services help with issues concerning the privatization, management, and rental of state property.

According to the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Doing Business-2015 report, which evaluates 189 countries, Azerbaijan has been ranked 10th in ease of registering property.

The online procedure to verify a title and obtain a non-encumbrance certificate takes less than a day and costs a total of 31 manats in Azerbaijan.

The notarization of a sale-purchase agreement takes 1 day and costs 200 AZN (notary fee) + 30 AZN (official services fee), while the application procedure to register property can take 20 days (normal procedure), 14 days (faster procedure), or 7 days (expedited) and costs more than 1000 AZN.

The official USD /manat rate is 1.0495 AZN