Oksana Ivanova, head of the city real estate department at NDV, answers:
All notes on the conversion of residential premises in apartment buildings must be reflected in the technical passport of the BTI. Namely, on the pages with the floor plan and explication. The seller of the apartment, as a rule, already has these documents on hand. If on the page with the floor plan there is a stamp “Permission for the re-equipment was not presented to the BTI”, it means that the re-development was carried out without permission, and the question of its legalization remains open. On the page with the explanation there should be a note with the number of the Housing Inspection act on the reconstruction of premises and the date of its issue. This suggests that the apartment was remodeled legally, but it is not indicated what kind of redevelopment. To find out exactly what permits were issued and for what, you need to request the specified act from the Housing Inspectorate.
How should a buyer check a secondary apartment?
Do small redevelopments need to be legalized?
How to check the existence of redevelopment and its legality?
This point is mandatory when purchasing any apartment. Redevelopment is considered to be the demolition or movement of walls and partitions, or even the installation of a bathtub instead of a shower stall, displacement or modernization of the so-called “wet points”.
In my practice, there have been cases when owners demolished a wall, turning a separate bathroom into an adjacent one, and then were surprised to learn that such amateur activity must be legalized. Moreover, when real estate is inherited, for example, the heir usually doesn’t care much about the fact of redevelopment .
