Only three years may be left to collect documents and begin construction.

The Russian government apparatus has approved a bill for submission to the State Duma, according to which land plots can be confiscated from developers through the courts if they have not received a construction permit within three years and have not at least partially built the facility. Officials will have the opportunity, under the plausible pretext of satisfying state or municipal needs, to take away other people's property, deputies and developers warn. On average in Russia, it takes developers three years to enter the site, but Moscow companies usually take more than four.

The bill “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation in terms of improving the procedure for the seizure of land plots for state and municipal needs,” introduced last year by deputy Oleg Valenchuk, was approved by the head of the government staff Sergei Sobyanin on April 6 (Kommersant has a copy of the review). . The bill proposes to confiscate land plots intended for construction from owners and tenants through the court, if three years after receiving it into ownership (or lease) “there are no capital construction objects on the land plot... and this owner has not been issued a construction permit.” . Now, explains Andrei Lebedev, lawyer of the law firm Yukov, Khrenov and Partners, according to the Civil Code (Article 284), a plot can be seized from the owner if it is intended for construction, but is not used for these purposes. “The wording is so unclear that it was practically not used in judicial practice. Legal disputes arose, but the maximum that threatened the developer was administrative liability in the form of a fine of 10-20 thousand rubles,” says the lawyer.

The bill has been sent for discussion to the Committee on Construction and Land Relations, a Kommersant source in the government explained. The head of the committee, Martin Shakkum, confirmed this, but declined to comment until it was discussed at a committee meeting. According to the procedure, after discussion in the committee, the draft will be sent for the first reading to the State Duma, if there are no objections from the legal department of the president. Kommersant's source clarified that at the moment the legal department has a number of comments. On the State Duma website there is a negative review of this bill from the head of the property committee, Viktor Pleskachevsky. He calls the bill a scheme for “the taking of someone else’s property, which allows, under the plausible pretext of satisfying state or municipal needs... based on the decision of a specific official, to remove any plot of land from private property.” “If the bill is adopted, it will be possible to seize the plot through the court quite simply and quickly - within a few months,” says Mr. Lebedev.

Participants in the Moscow market note that capital investors will not be able to fulfill these conditions due to current work practices. As explained by the head of the department of pre-project and design studies at Metropol Development, Evgeniy Kadulin, until 2007 for a project with an area of 200-300 thousand square meters. m only the process of issuing a decree of the Moscow government, which approves the planning project, took three to four years. Next, another year and a half for the development of the project itself, of which nine months for state examination. Only after passing the examination the developer receives a construction permit. “To prevent this initiative from destroying the market, the Moscow government will have to prescribe a new procedure for issuing documentation within the time frame corresponding to this bill,” notes Evgeny Kadulin. According to him, most large-scale projects in Moscow do not have construction permits. Among such objects, he named the Media Center project in Pechatniki (129 thousand sq. m, customer - Pushkinskaya Square). In the regions, you can obtain all permits in two to three years, but sometimes the period is longer, especially if it is a large territory, says Mikhail Lubenets, co-owner of Peresvet-region. “Developers are buying part of the site for future use, this is the point of being a developer, not a builder!” - one of the market participants is indignant.

Olga Sichkar, Margarita Fedorova

Developers are threatened with seizure