You misunderstood us

Elena Milko's family sold an apartment in St. Petersburg to buy a section of a townhouse in the Vartemyagi Park cottage community. The development company promised buyers the opportunity to register. However, when the transactions were already completed, it turned out that it was impossible to register.

The popular term “propiska” refers to permanent registration at the place of residence (as opposed to temporary registration). Despite the fact that legally this concept no longer exists, it is widely used. And in the advertisement for the village of Vartemägi Park it was registration that appeared.

Elena has soon been unregistered anywhere for a year, and because of this she has encountered considerable difficulties. She can't renew her driver's license. Neither she nor her husband will be able to travel abroad: they will not be issued a visa. Questions arose when applying for a debit card (one bank refused), and a credit card was asked to be closed in the near future. The Milko spouses cannot even participate in regional and municipal elections.

Families with children have even more problems. To send children to school, local registration is required, at least temporarily. But with the certificate of ownership that the developer gave them, this is out of the question. Because it says “residential premises without the right to register in it.” Moreover, in the advertising of the cottage village - both on external banners and in the official VKontakte group of the village - the advertisement for the possibility of registration continued until November last year (there is a photo and a screenshot). Although, judging by the responses from the developer, the management knew about the problems with registration back in July.

For some time now, citizens have had the opportunity to register in holiday villages. In 2008, the Constitutional Court declared the existing ban on registering citizens in buildings on garden plots that belong to the lands of settlements to be contrary to the Constitution.

If you believe the general plan of the Agalatov municipality on the administration website, the territory of the DNP Vartemägi Park is included within the boundaries of the settlement. From this point of view, the advertisement did not promise anything fundamentally impossible. And Elena took her word for it. To prove that registration was not a problem, Elena was shown the passports of other real estate buyers in the village. There was registration at the place of residence. True, it was issued before 2017.

In March 2017, Elena and her husband sold their apartment, leaving “nowhere,” and bought a section in a townhouse. “We paid the head of the sales department, Elena Anatolyevna Gavrilova, to register property rights,” says Elena. “But it took four months instead of the promised two weeks, and the documents were handed over only in July.”

As it turned out, this delay had significant consequences. The issued certificate of ownership turned out to be without the right of registration. When asked why it was impossible to register, a consultant on the company’s website at the end of last year replied: “Because in July, in the Vsevolozhsk region, a law was passed on equalizing DNP lands with SNT. The issue will be resolved in the first quarter of 2018. We are working on it." By that time, Elena and other neighbors were removed from the official VKontakte group of the village (as she believes, for inconvenient questions), and she created her own group - a protest one. “People who were looking for housing here started writing to me. It turned out that they are still being told (December) that they can register in the village. And during all this time I had only one answer from the sales department - we can return your money for the section if you don’t like it.” For obvious reasons, returning the goods and collecting the money is very problematic: the city apartment was sold a long time ago, and it is hardly possible to buy a similar one for the same money.

What has changed in the legislation of the Vsevolozhsk region that has made it impossible to register the Milko spouses? After all, the decision of the Constitutional Court has a disproportionately higher rank than the decision of municipal deputies. If the Constitutional Court decided that it is not prohibited to register in residential buildings on garden plots within populated areas, then this is not prohibited, regardless of the form of the homeowners’ association. True, SNT (horticultural non-profit partnership) can only be located on agricultural lands, while DNP (dacha non-profit partnership) can also be on the lands of populated areas. But the mysterious “equalization” does not apply to the village of Vartemägi Park. His DNP is located within the boundaries of the settlement, and there is no way it can turn into a SNT.

They didn't promise anything

In response to a request from Novaya, the development company BusinessStroyGroup reported that the word “registration” in the advertisement for the village was not understood as a guarantee as such, but only as assistance in preparing documents. “I hope you, as a sensible person, understand that our company cannot influence the adopted rules for registering citizens in the territory of a rural settlement,” Elena Gavrilova, head of the sales department, explained to Novaya. “We are very sorry that Ms. Milko is wishful thinking, but our employees could never guarantee Ms. Milko the opportunity to register her at her place of residence due to the fact that, in our deep conviction, not a single commercial organization in the Russian Federation can guarantee the fulfillment of their duties by public authorities.”

“I don’t demand to be registered, I want to be given a certificate of ownership with the possibility of registration,” Elena Milko clarifies.

Moreover, from the developer’s response it became clear that people can only register in such villages through the courts: “Local authorities and migration authorities took the following path of executing the decision of the Constitutional Court. 1) Primary refusal of registration issued by the Federal Migration Service or local administration, creating the need to go to court. 2) Next - judicial recognition of the right to register in a specific object personally for the person who received the court decision. 3) Registration at the place of residence with the relevant authorities on the basis of a court decision.”

Photo: vk.com

But then why did the advertisement say “registration” and not “assistance in preparing documents for registration” or “assistance in preparing a lawsuit to obtain registration”? “Because in this case there would be much less people willing to buy,” Elena Milko rightly believes. Elena Gavrilova has a different opinion. She believes that sensible buyers should not take the advertising text literally: “The pages of all offers in the village have the following link: “ We draw your attention to the fact that this website is for informational purposes only and under no circumstances do the information materials and prices posted on the site constitute a public offer as defined by the provisions of Article 437 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.” Unfortunately, we have never saved print screens from our website in this part, so we cannot provide them to you, but we assure you that during the development of all our information resources from the moment they were launched until today, this phrase was always present on them and has never changed.”

But there are no notes on the banner photo. “There was nothing in the official group of the village (from which I was expelled) either,” Milko claims.

Irina Tretyakova, who last summer was looking for housing in Vartemägi Park, told Novaya that she was also assured that obtaining registration would be hassle-free: “We were told that everyone in the village is registered, that the children go to the local school.” Sergei Radzhabov, who bought property in the village in May 2017, also heard assurances from sellers that registration would be available. And, of course, no one made any reservations about the judicial registration procedure.

However, continuing to read the response from the head of the sales department, Novaya discovered the following information: “ Currently, based on the existing status of the land plots we sell, registration in the constructed objects is impossible (...) If changes to the General Plan of the Rural Settlement, considered from 2015–2016, are made (...) then the issue with the status of land plots will be resolved in such a way that registration of citizens on such lands is possible.”

“But if they know that registration is impossible, then why do they promise that the issue will be resolved in the first quarter of 2018?” – Elena asks a rhetorical question again. However, now she is no longer concerned about who is to blame, but what she should do next. Should I try to get a residence permit through the court and spend at least 50 thousand on a lawyer, or should I sell my unsuccessful home and return to St. Petersburg? For now, she is waiting for answers to appeals to the local administration and the prosecutor's office (the latter, however, has not responded since August).

Most likely, the problems with registration in Vartemägi are not related to the status of the site (contrary to the management’s answers), but to the status of the building.

Until 2017, buyers paid for the registration of property rights to the same Elena Gavrilova, but received the “correct” certificates with the right of registration. Why did the status of those same houses suddenly drop in 2017?

Even if the developer is not legally guilty of anything, the question remains with the legality of the advertisement. According to the federal law “On Advertising,” “advertising is not allowed if it lacks some essential information about the advertised product, the conditions for its acquisition or use, if this distorts the meaning of the information and misleads advertising consumers.”

Just one word – “registration” – gave Vartemägi Park a competitive advantage. “Other villages did not promise registration, and prices there were two times lower. We didn’t even go there to look,” Elena complains.