Chapter 2. Guarantees of real estate activity

Chapter 6. Issues of formation of accounting and tax reporting

>> >> >> 2.4. Realtor liability insurance Currently, there is no special law obliging real estate agencies to insure their liability. The rules for carrying out insurance of real estate activity should be established by the legislation on insurance and the federal law on compulsory insurance of professional liability of realtors. Thus, in order to obtain the status of a qualified professional market participant, realtors must insure their entrepreneurial risk in case of incurring losses as a result of liability for failure to fulfill obligations to the recipients of their services. Citizens are frightened by daily media reports about those who have lost their homes as a result of the intricacies of "black brokers". Realtors' liability insurance would add confidence to citizens when contacting firms to solve their housing problems. Thus, the insurance policy would guarantee the safety of the purchaser of real estate. The insurance system, which begins its development in Russia, is similar to the "title insurance" that has become widespread in the United States. Title insurance is considered by US land law experts to be the best form of guarantee in real estate transactions. The current position of insurance as a necessary element of securing rights to real estate in relation to America is legitimate and necessary, taking into account the historical patterns that have developed in this country. But Russian reality is far from American. In our country, the insurance system is just beginning to develop. Under current Russian law, any formally registered real estate transaction may be challenged within the statutory limitation period. Thus, a person acquiring real estate, even if he acts in good faith, risks losing the property in the future. The state does not guarantee the purchaser of real estate compensation for the damage incurred, except in cases where the fault of the registrar is proved by the court. But these cases are rare. Under these conditions, private guarantees for the purchaser of real estate will be most effective. The formation of a system of guarantees in the sphere of circulation of rights to real estate in the current situation is entrusted to Russian insurance companies operating in the real estate market. The fundamental difference between "title insurance" and its traditional types lies solely in the fact that with "title insurance" Insurance Company guarantees compensation for losses that are the consequences of events that were likely to take place in the past. This feature is only a consequence of the so-called "actual" system of registration of rights to real estate, which differs in that a real estate transaction is voidable at any time. In addition, this kind of system is characterized by a "unilateral agreement" on the transfer of "rights" to real estate. According to established practice, the act of transferring "rights" to real estate is signed by only one, the transferring party. This document must comply with strictly defined formal requirements and, among other things, contain an indication of the scope of guarantees of rights transferred to the buyer. In other words, the seller is obliged in a certain way to "declare" his legal right. Several forms of such "declarations" are known historically. 1. Full guarantee: the seller guarantees that he has legal rights to the land; that there are no defects in the documents confirming his rights; that no third party has rights to the transferred land; that the earth is free from encumbrances and restrictions; that the seller is authorized to sign the transfer document; that the transferable right is legal and cannot be revoked in the future. 2. Special guarantee: the seller guarantees only that during the entire period of actual ownership of the transferred real estate, he has not committed any actions that call into question his legal rights. Unlike the first case, here the seller announces that he is "responsible only for himself." 3. Sales contract: the seller declares the sale of real estate to the person specified in the contract, while he does not make any statements regarding the legality of the right of ownership and does not put forward any guarantees. Currently, this is the most common form of transfer of property rights. This kind of practice in real estate transactions assumes that the owner is only "implied": any of the owners indicated in the "chain of owners" in the future may turn out to be the proper owner if it is proved that he was wrongfully deprived of the right in the past. Therefore, the analysis of the "chain" is a necessary procedure. The task is to find the "weak link". To do this, it is necessary to study all the "recorded" acts of transmission. In addition, in some cases, wills judgments, legislative acts. In addition, it is recommended to analyze the likelihood of events in the past that could not be recorded in the documents: secret marriages, unknown heirs, fraud in sales transactions, etc. Only by the results of this kind of complete research can one evaluate the "title" of the property. The criterion of "purity" of the title: each link in the "chain", from the first to the last, must be correct and legal. Participants in the real estate market are exempt from this work with title insurance. The price of such liberation is the cost" insurance policy". The insurance fee is paid at a time, but the validity period of the policy is not limited. The cost of insurance depends on many factors: on the volume of "research", on the "purity" of the title, on whether the act of insurance is repeated. In any case, there is a payment for "research " title. Cases of real estate rights insurance in modern Russia- units. There are even fewer cases of payments under an insurance policy. Basically, the realtor's liability is insured. This indirectly recognizes the realtor's right to make a mistake not in favor of the client. The reasons for making such "mistakes" are insignificant. The main thing is that guarantees of "good faith" of a realtor can have only one dimension - money. For Russian researchers of the "purity of title" there is no need to carefully look for the "weak link" in the "chain of owners". According to the existing law, all "rights" to real estate are created by the state, and if these "rights" are somehow defective, it only means that they were created exactly "such". The responsibility of the holders of rights to real estate is "tacitly" shifted to the state. And if the state is unable to reliably guarantee these legal rights, then private guarantees in the form of title insurance are an objective necessity. But in any case, it will be a special kind of title insurance - insurance against the risks associated with the "irresponsibility" of the state. According to the draft federal law "On real estate activities in Russian Federation"It is proposed to oblige the realtor to conclude an insurance contract for all transactions, the amount of which exceeds 3,000 times the statutory monthly wage, in an amount corresponding to the amount of the transaction. Wherein sum insured cannot be less than 3,000 times the minimum monthly wage established by law. The restoration of insurance guarantees when using them must be provided by the licensee within ten days after the payment of the sum insured. In accordance with the Regulations on licensing real estate activities in Moscow and similar documents in a number of other regions of Russia (for example, the Khabarovsk Territory, Volgograd and Sverdlovsk regions), the existence of a realtors' liability insurance contract is a condition for obtaining a license. The company's professional liability insurance is carried out in order to protect third parties. Insurance is made in case of an unintentional error, negligence or omission of the responsible executors of the company in providing brokerage services which caused damage both to persons who have concluded a contract with the company for the provision of services, and to persons with whom there are no contractual relations, but whose property interests may be damaged. the federal law The project on real estate activities provides for the introduction of professional liability insurance of a realtor as mandatory. The objects of insurance differ: 1) in professional liability insurance - the property interests of the realtor himself, associated with the obligation to compensate the client for losses; 2) in the title case - the property interests of the owner of the rights to real estate (owner, mortgage lender). Therefore, accents are placed differently in the description of insured events: 1) in case of liability insurance, the unprofessional nature of the actions of the realtor has legal significance; 2) with title insurance, an objective loss by the injured (insured) of the rights to real estate for reasons not even related to the services of a realtor or a lawyer is sufficient. Since certain conditions are provided for indemnification by law - illegality of actions, the presence of damage or lost profits, a causal relationship between them, then all of them will also be characteristic of receiving insurance payment under a realtor's professional liability insurance contract. Model rules usually indicate that the insurer undertakes to compensate the victim (client) only for the damage that is "in direct causal connection with the implementation of real estate activities." The absence of a legislative basis for real estate activities and very "moderate" requirements for a realtor mean for the client nothing more than a predominantly judicial confirmation procedure insured event- unprofessional actions of the realtor and the damage caused by them. AT model contract professional liability insurance of a realtor of SOJSC "Russian Insurance Center" the number of insured events includes losses caused in the course of real estate activities due to: 1) legally incorrect registration of the transaction; 2) the use of false information about the property, including data on its value, ownership rights to it; 3) conclusion of a transaction with an incapacitated or partially incapacitated citizen; 4) the conclusion of a transaction under the influence of deceit, violence and other illegal actions of third parties in relation to the victim, etc. The issuance of guarantee obligations by real estate agencies and a kind of competition with traditional insurers is a temporary phenomenon due to the ongoing development of the real estate services market, the development of new economic spaces and the attraction of additional customers. Read popular articles on the site

The concept of insurance.

Types of insurance in the real estate market

Insurance is divided into three main branches: Personal insurance(life, health, work capacity of people are insured), property insurance(property and property interests are insured) and liability Insurance, which is formally part of property insurance(the liability of the insured to third parties is insured).

The most famous is the classic insurance, which provides for property insurance. To special types insurance applies related to the purchased property. In the secondary real estate market title insurance(financial risks associated with the loss of ownership of the object), and on the primary - financial risk insurance members of the new building. Mortgage insurance has a number of differences in the primary and secondary real estate market and is a combination of property insurance of the property in combination with personal insurance life and professional working capacity of borrowers. In addition to the above types of insurance, a special group should be allocated real estate professional liability insurance.

Development of real estate objects (development, land development, redevelopment

A significant place in the real estate market is occupied by entrepreneurial activity related to the development and development of land, territories, structures and other real estate. In countries with developed market economies, this activity is called development.

The essence of the phenomenon of development can be expressed as follows:

1)special type of entrepreneurial activity in order to receive income as a result of the transformation of material processes, expressed in the investment development of real estate. It includes the selection of a team of project participants, market research, marketing, design, construction, financing, accounting, property management. This area of ​​activity requires fairly large investments with a long cycle, and real estate objects can create regular flows for a long time. Money. Thus, development is one of the varieties of investment projects;

2) transformation real estate object as a result of construction (repair) and other works with buildings, structures or land or its transformation into another new real estate object (change of functional purpose), which has a higher value than the original one.

A developer is an entrepreneur who initiates and organizes the best possible options for the development of real estate objects, including project financing and implementation of the created object.

Currently, almost all organizations involved in housing construction call themselves developers. And not without reason, since for the most part the land plots on which construction could be carried out were absolutely unprepared: there were no legal registration, there were no engineering networks, etc. Construction organizations also had to solve the tasks of preparing land plots, while each of them was engaged in development, as a rule, for their own business: on prepared land Building company built housing, attracted investments in it, and subsequently organized maintenance of the constructed facilities.

In domestic practice, a legal or natural person who owns or leases a plot of land, has made a decision to build or reconstruct an object (complex of objects), determines the financing schemes for construction (reconstruction) and coordinates work on its implementation from the pre-project stage to putting the object into action or operational stage, called developer. A natural question arises: are these concepts equivalent? Certainly not! In this case, there is a combination of development functions by the developer.

The role of the developer as a professional entrepreneur is determined by his functions. The most important of them is the choice of the best possible option for the development of real estate objects, ensuring the optimal scheme for financing a project for the development of real estate objects, the implementation of the project, as well as the implementation of the created object by selling it, leasing it, etc.

Development is a direction in which other profitable lines of business transfer a significant part of the income, and wide availability borrowed money, the development of the mechanism for their involvement in circulation and the variety of financial instruments create a favorable environment for the development and functioning of development. At the same time, development, like other types of business, depends on the investment climate in the region.

According to the main principle market economy the developer may not implement investment project rather sell it highly ready to start construction works and engage in another investment project.

The growth in investment in domestic real estate has led to an increase in demand and prices for land plots (especially for commercial construction), as a result, to the active development of land development, the main task of which is to prepare territories for the start of the construction process. Classic land development is the formation of a habitat, increasing the liquidity of sites and their investment attractiveness.

Foreign and Russian developers and investors do not want to waste time solving the problems of transferring land from one category to another, coordinating the interests of private owners in the process of buying land plots from them or finding out the potential possibility of connecting to engineering networks.

In Russian conditions, the term "land development" itself includes a fairly wide range of activities - from the transfer of land from the category of agricultural purposes to the integrated development of territories,] and the result of land development is, first of all, investment product, i.e., a piece of land prepared for the start of the construction process. To achieve this result, it is necessary to solve three groups of problems:

- concept development (selection of the most effective use case land plot);

- legal support of the land plot, including changing the category of these lands;

Engineering and technical (connection to utilities, construction of roads and networks, as well as arrangement).

Professional land developers specialize in a full range of services, choosing consulting, marketing, legal services, project management or engineering as their main activity and outsourcing the rest of the services, and rarely build on the entire plot of land. They carry out engineering preparation of the land, a planning project, and then they sell small plots of land in lots to other developers.

In the near future, companies will appear on the domestic real estate market offering comprehensive services to resolve legal, financial, organizational and coordination issues, that is, resolving all issues - from the conclusion of a transaction to obtaining a certificate of ownership and commissioning of an object.

The developer's responsibilities typically include selecting and defining a conceptual business idea for the project; choosing a site that best suits this idea and acquiring rights to it; marketing; search for mechanisms to attract investors (including through the development of collective investment schemes, strengthening ties with financial market); organization of project financing; design and construction management; renting out the completed facility with subsequent operation or selling it. All this is preceded by an analysis of the best development of the object. Depending on the functional orientation, there are office,trade,residential,hotel,sports,entertaining,recreational and combined development.

Entrepreneurial activity associated with the transformation of a real estate object into another, new object, with a different functional purpose, as a result of which the value of the object increases, in the Western economy is called redevelopment. In domestic practice, this direction of entrepreneurial activity is called the development of territories (secondary development). Redeveloper - This is the person who manages the process of development of territories.

A working tool that allows attracting investments at different stages of development of a development project and reducing its risks is master plan. This term can be translated as a prototype, foresight of the project, an attempt to look at the future development of the territory. The classic master plan is necessary for the implementation of projects related to redevelopment (regeneration of territories), as well as the development of large primary (more than 100 hectares) land areas, and for the so-called opportunity projects, similar to the projects of the Olympic territory in London, the former ZIL territory in Moscow , "Europe Embankment" in St. Petersburg, i.e. in projects implemented by the joint efforts of several owners of real estate.

12, Property management: goals, definitions, approaches Property management

Real estate management is an activity carried out at one's own risk, aimed at making a profit (on one's own behalf or on behalf of the owner) from the exercise of the powers of possession, use and disposal of real estate.

Property management can be internal and external.

Internal real estate management is the activity of a real estate market entity, regulated by its own regulatory documents (code, charter, regulations, rules, contracts, instructions, etc.).

External real estate management is the activity of state structures (or their authorized representatives) aimed at creating a regulatory framework and monitoring compliance by all subjects of the real estate market with established norms and rules.

From the point of view of real estate management, real estate market entities perform the following types real estate impact:

1. State regulation real estate market.

a) by direct intervention, i.e. direct administrative control, including:

Creation of laws, regulations, rules, instructions and regulations governing the functioning of the real estate market;

Introduction of a liability mechanism for violation of regulatory requirements when making transactions with real estate;

Monitoring compliance by all subjects of the real estate market with established norms and rules;

Registration of rights to real estate and transactions with them;

Licensing of entrepreneurial activity in the field of real estate.

b) by indirect influence, i.e. economic methods real estate market management:

Taxation of real estate objects and provision of benefits;

Implementation of state target programs;

Establishment of depreciation rates;

Reforming the housing and communal services;

Comprehensive solution of issues of land use and land privatization, development of engineering infrastructure, etc.

2. Public impact. The reaction of wide sections of society, including professional participants in the real estate market, to certain real estate transactions, which serves as the basis for regulations, regulations, etc.

3. Management of certain real estate objects:

Operating real estate - real estate that the owner uses to conduct a specific business activity;

Investment property is property that the owner uses to maximize profits.

4. Management of systems of real estate objects of the Federation:

Management of residential real estate systems;

Management of non-residential real estate systems.

Marketing Approach

Marketing support should be a basic element in the development of the entire set of measures in the field of planning, organization, regulation, accounting and control.

Modern concept marketing- is the concept of orientation of any activity to the consumer. This concept implies the implementation of the following main functions in the field of property management:

Comprehensive market research, especially changes in the field of personal and social needs;

Application of acquired knowledge about the market to develop new projects that are needed by the market, capable of satisfying new or old needs, but more fully, better and more efficiently than existing ones;

Using knowledge about the market to organize the construction and sale (resale, lease) of the object and to achieve the greatest commercial effect from the implementation of the project.

Real estate marketing management is integrated system to ensure the competitive parameters of the projected object or an integrated system for the implementation of the marketing concept of the created real estate object.

Before investing capital in real estate, it is necessary to study the market and develop standards to ensure the competitiveness of the object. In other words, it is necessary to determine what to create, with what quality indicators, to what extent, at what cost, in what timeframe, to whom and at what price to sell.

Ensuring the full operation of real estate objects during the entire standard service life is achieved through a kind of "toolkit", which includes technical norms and rules, methods for researching and assessing the state of individual structural elements. Analysis of activities for the maintenance of the property in foreign countries shows that one of the main tools is technical certificate real estate object. Technical passport combines information regarding operation and maintenance and performs the functions information system. One of the tasks of using the registration certificate of a real estate object is the transfer of data on buildings and related machines and equipment in a user-friendly form to owners and tenants of buildings, property care organizations.

LEGAL DOCUMENTS FOR COMPLETING THE ASSESSMENT REPORT:

• Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On appraisal activities in the Russian Federation;
• Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On Amendments and Additions to the Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On Appraisal Activities in the Russian Federation”;
• Federal Law of the Russian Federation No. 157-F3 dated July 27, 2006;
• Federal valuation standards approved by the government of the Russian Federation.

the date the report was made;

serial number of the assessment report;

the reasons for the assessment;

task for assessment, which is drawn up in accordance with federal requirements and standards;

the main facts and conclusions drawn up (there should be data that define the object of assessment, its results acquired in the process of applying various methods), as well as the final level of the value of the object of assessment;

information about the expert conducting the assessment (his location, as well as information about which company he works for);

a full description of the object of assessment (if it is owned by a legal entity, then you need to indicate the book value of the object and details of the legal entity;

assessment standards and the rationale for their use;

a list of the information used to carry out the assessment, as well as the sources of its receipt;

restrictions and assumptions adopted in the evaluation process;

analysis of the main external factors that affect the cost of the object;

algorithm for determining the value of the object being valued;

the total cost of the object;

restrictions, as well as limits on the use of the resulting result;

a detailed description of the process of assessing an object in the process of using comparative, cost and income methods and agreeing on the results obtained with their help;

the exact date of the final determination of the value of the valued object;

a list of documents that establish the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the objects (only those that were used by the expert are indicated);

goals and objectives of the assessment;

additional information about the appraiser and the customer.

In addition to the main report, at the end of the assessment, an annex to it is also created. It contains copies of those documents that the expert used in the course of his work (documents establishing the rights to the object of assessment; conclusions of various examinations, acts of technical inventory, as well as others, if they were used by the appraiser).

MAIN SECTIONS OF THE ASSESSMENT REPORT:

general information;

restrictions;

the assumptions made;

description of the object being assessed;

description of property rights;

review of the real estate market;

analysis of the most efficient operation;

cost approach;

comparative approach;

income approach;

agreement on results;

determination of the liquidation value;

applications.

Each of the reports is sealed and stitched. Each of its pages has its own number.

There are significant economic and political challenges associated with real estate taxation. In Russia, there is now not a real estate market as such (plots of land with all the elements inseparable from it), but a market for individual elements of a real estate object - apartments, offices, warehouses, etc. Moreover, the "turnover" of these individual market segments is limited from the point of view of both administrative and economic barriers, as well as problems associated with the administration of these taxes.

Problems of land taxation: the conducted cadastral valuation of land is illegal, in fact there is no land market, the problems of administering this tax associated with large time, labor, financial costs, the presence of a significant number of land plots that have no boundaries, i.e., are not defined and do not have of the right holder, we are talking about land plots that have not passed state registration, as a result of which these plots are not subject to taxation. The solution of the identified tasks lies primarily in the adoption of the Concept of reforming the taxation of real estate and the precise implementation of this document.

There are many unresolved tasks related to the taxation of property of organizations: the status of the tax on property of organizations is defined as regional, which contradicts the main directions of the real estate tax reform, the determination of the tax base is carried out on the basis of the residual balance sheet value, which is several times lower than the market value, the existence of legal methods of avoiding taxation by this tax: assignment of property on accounts 03 “Profitable investments in material values”, 08 “Investments in non-current assets

» allows you not to include this property in the tax base, thereby not paying tax, the preservation of movable property in the tax base of the corporate property tax does not allow using this tax to stimulate investment, in addition, movable property easy to withdraw from taxation, registration of property of the organization on individuals allows you to apply a more favorable taxation system and pay a smaller amount of tax.

The paper identifies the problems of taxation of property of individuals: many objects of property on the territory of the Russian Federation have not passed inventory control, the inventory value of property of individuals, which is the tax base of this tax, does not reflect real price taxable property due to the fact that the methodology currently used by the technical inventory bodies for calculating the inventory value of property is biased, outdated and contains a lot of contradictions.

When identifying a land plot by administrative services, various designations are used: by the Federal Registration Service - Conventional numbers, by the Federal Tax Service- Identification Number of the Taxpayer, "Rosnedvizhimost" - the cadastral number of the land plot. In this regard, the dissertation proves the need to use a single identifier - a unique number of a property for tax purposes. The author proposes to consider the taxpayer's passport number as an identification number with the addition of the FTS code and the cadastral number of the land plot to it. These land identification proposals make it possible to create a unified Russian registry taxpayers and property cadastre.

There is no up-to-date and reliable accounting and object valuation property for taxation purposes (I would like to note the need not only to get away from property valuation carried out by technical inventory bodies, but first of all to resolve the issue of joint or separate valuation and separate or joint taxation of two components of real estate - land and property, and on this basis create a unified all-Russian database of property objects (property cadastre), taking into account both property objects and their owners).

Real estate insurance

The concept of insurance.
Federal Law No. 172-FZ of December 10, 2003 “On the Organization of Insurance Business in the Russian Federation” defines insurance as follows:

Insurance is “a relationship to protect the interests of individuals and legal entities, Russian Federation, subjects of the Russian Federation and municipalities upon the occurrence of certain insured events at the expense of monetary funds formed by insurers from paid insurance premiums (insurance premiums), as well as at the expense of other funds of insurers.

It can be clarified that insurance is an activity in which the insurer provides a financial service by selling to the insured a promise to pay a specified amount of money upon the occurrence of a certain event (in accumulative types of insurance), or to protect his property interests by monetary or in-kind compensation for harm or damage (in risk types insurance).

RussianRealty note:
The activities of real estate companies in the Russian Federation are subject to compulsory insurance.

Realtors work for both fear and conscience. What is each client of a real estate agency insured against? From the unprofessionalism of its employees. And these are not just beautiful words, this is a fact. After all, if real estate insurance is a voluntary matter (although the Moscow authorities are trying to make it voluntary-compulsory, including the amount insurance premium in a special column in utility bills), then without professional activity insurance, no brokerage firm will be able to either obtain or renew a license. Therefore, it cannot work.

"What's in it for me?" - you think and you will not are right. For example, you turned to some agency for help in traveling with "beloved" relatives. Two apartments were chosen for you, and you celebrated a housewarming party. Suddenly, after a while, a former tenant of the apartment appears, who was serving a sentence in places not so remote, and therefore checked out of the living space, but did not lose the right to use it.

Who is to blame? Of course, realtors who have not properly checked the documents for your apartment. Or is your transaction made through a real estate agency invalidated for any reason? Do not despair! You have the right to submit statement of claim to the court demanding compensation for the moral and material damage caused to you by the agency's employees. If your claim is satisfied, then the insurer is obliged to pay you compensation in the amount that the court determines, in the manner stipulated by the insurance rules (approximately within two weeks).

Of course, the insurance company will act on the side of the defendant, that is, the real estate company. But judges, after all, are also people, that is, individuals, and not legal ones. And therefore, most often they humanly sympathize not with firms, but with ordinary private citizens.

It must be noted that the insurer does not reimburse penalties. I'll give you a real example. A man bought an apartment through realtors, which went according to the "alternative". That is, the people living in it were obliged to vacate the living space within the period specified in the relevant clause of the contract. But they weren't released. And through no fault of their own, the deal with the apartment they wanted to move into stalled. The new owner of the apartment was sitting on pins and needles for two weeks, until finally, the housing he had acquired was vacated.

Another would have breathed a sigh of relief that it was all over and started moving. But that was not our hero. He sued realtors, and not only won, but achieved the application of penalties to compensate for his moral damage to the agency. These sanctions were paid by the agency itself, and not by the company that insured his professional activities.

There is a type of insurance that is not very common in Moscow - insurance against the risk of loss of property rights. Most often, realtors in this case act as insurance agents, and the insurer issues few such policies: 5-10 pieces per year per agency. Be sure to ask your realtor about this. Because according to such insurance, if you lose ownership of real estate, you will be paid not as much as the court decides, but the market value of the apartment.

This also applies to cases where the transaction is carried out on the basis of a BTI certificate.
Of course, if you lose the right of ownership, and the living space itself - for example, as a result of a fire - then there can be no talk of any compensation, this is provided for by other types of insurance.

And the last. All firms that insure the activities of real estate agencies are members of professional associations of realtors (MAGR) and are divided, in turn, into authorized and accredited by the Moscow government. About who, as Mikhail Sergeevich said, is xy, you can see in the insurance contract between the agency and the insured.

God forbid, you, of course, use their services, but just in case: it is better if it is an authorized company. About accredited to me, one very experienced lawyer of a reputable real estate company said briefly: "Second freshness."

What does it mean - professional liability insurance, and from what risks can it protect ordinary citizens who seek help from realtors? For answers to these questions, the editors of the Real Estate Altai magazine turned to Irina Popova, director of the Altai branch of AlfaStrakhovanie, the company where Altai realtors are insured.

- Irina Valerievna, tell us why realtors need to insure their professional liability?

The fact is that mistakes made by real estate agents when drawing up documents, or when checking the legal purity of a transaction, may lead to the recognition of the transaction as invalid. As a result, a situation may arise in which the client of the real estate agency will not be able to receive either housing or return his money.

Accordingly, realtors will have to compensate the injured persons. And since real estate companies do not have their own reserve fund for this case, professional liability insurance comes to their aid, in which the insurance company takes care of all losses.

- Tell us, from what kind of mistakes realtors are insured?

In short, an insured event for this type of insurance is considered to be an agent causing harm to injured persons as a result of the provision of services that are part of the professional activities of realtors, which are specified in the insurance contract.

For example, this could be an activity:

Selling real estate at auctions and on a competitive basis;

When making transactions of sale, donation, exchange of real estate (including intermediary):

By resettlement communal apartments, resettlement of residents from houses subject to reconstruction; conclusion of contracts for the sale of residential premises with a lifetime maintenance;

For leasing real estate objects owned by both legal entities and individuals, etc.

- How much will the damage be compensated for?

The amount currently insured by professional liability of realtors covers 99 percent of the amount involved in all real estate transactions in the territory Altai Territory. That is, we can say that any damage can be compensated in full. For example, if an apartment worth 2.1 million rubles is indicated in the contract of sale, and the transaction is declared invalid, then the injured person is compensated for all damages, including legal costs, if they were incurred.

I note that, despite the fact that realtors are insured, the beneficiary is still the injured person.

- What are the terms for transferring money to the victims, is this procedure bureaucratically loaded?

I wouldn't say so. Naturally, documents are checked, including the identification of fraudulent or obviously illegal actions. But after all, the real estate activity of each agency is already checked at the time of insurance, so the verification procedure is not loaded with additional formalities and payments are made to the maximum short time, approximately within 15 days from the date of receipt of the complete package of documents.

- How many payments for this type of insurance have already been made in the Altai Territory?

It is worth noting the high level of professionalism of our Altai realtors, since not a single insured event has occurred on the territory of the region for the entire period of insurance. In general, such payments have already been made in Russia, but there were no such precedents in Altai, despite the fact that professional liability insurance for realtors has been going on for more than a year.

On the one hand, yes. Firstly, because any damage caused due to a realtor's professional error will be reimbursed in full. Secondly, because each agency, before concluding an insurance contract, undergoes a thorough check on its professionalism, so it can already be trusted.

On the other hand, the contract of professional liability insurance does not provide for compensation for damage due to intentional, intentional or fraudulent action or inaction of the agent. That is, if the realtor decides to deliberately deceive his client, then such risks are not covered by the insurance contract, because. according to international practice, policyholder fraud is an exception to coverage for all types of insurance.

But such a situation is unlikely, since agencies that are ready to insure their professional liability are very concerned about their reputation and will not deliberately, for the sake of one-time profit, spoil their further professional growth.

As the representatives of the NP Union of Realtors of Barnaul and Altai Krai themselves note, professional liability insurance has become a very important, necessary and timely step and has increased the reputation of real estate agencies.

Katerina Sotnikova, Real Estate Altai.