There are more than 500 thousand houses in Baku and Absheron that cannot get an extract from the real estate register

In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and its surrounding settlements, many landowners possess municipal documents but lack government recognition and support for these documents. This situation has arisen due to the fact that municipalities have been stripped of their authority to issue land orders for the past 16 years.

Nemat Aliyev, a resident of the Binagadi district, shared his experience with RadioAzadlig, stating that he had constructed a house and possessed municipal documents. However, when he attempted to sell the house and requested an official extract, he was informed that these documents held no legal validity.

MP Fazil Mustafa informed Turan news agency that municipalities in Azerbaijan have minimal involvement in land-related matters. He criticized the situation where individuals who had been paying municipal taxes for decades suddenly found their properties taken away, rendering their municipal documents useless. Mustafa emphasized that steps should be taken to adequately protect property rights, as the lack of such protection had become a significant issue in the country. He also highlighted cases where citizens did not feel secure in their ownership rights, and there were instances where land had not been privatized despite the presence of properties on it. Mustafa called for urgent rectification of these problems.

Real estate expert Elnur Farzaliyev, speaking to RadioAzadlig, revealed unofficial statistics suggesting that over 500,000 private houses in Baku and Absheron were unable to obtain an official extract. The majority of these houses possessed municipal documents that were used to purchase land and construct houses, but the properties could not be officially privatized. However, Farzaliyev clarified that this situation did not apply to all municipal documents, as some lands had been sold legitimately by municipalities through auctions, allowing for the extraction of official documents.

According to Farzaliyev, intentional or unintentional mismanagement led to the sale of lands designated for various purposes as municipal lands. This included cases where agricultural lands and oil fields were wrongly categorized as municipal lands. Consequently, when owners of houses built on these lands attempted to obtain official documents and extracts, it became evident that the lands did not belong to the municipality but were under the jurisdiction of different institutions, which the municipalities had no authority to sell.

Attempts were made to contact municipalities for their perspective on the issue. However, some municipalities, choosing to remain anonymous, pointed out that this problem originated when certain citizens illegally seized land before the establishment of municipalities (before 1999). They asserted that if some municipalities were involved in unlawful activities, they should be held accountable under the law.