We study the pitfalls when buying a room in an apartment

Buying a room in an apartment becomes a solution if money is tight and you need to buy your own home. Current legislation allows you to buy not the whole apartment, but only part of it - the main thing is to prepare the documents correctly. Read our article about how to make such a purchase and what risks it may entail.

• Advantages and disadvantages
• Features and pitfalls
• Procedure
• What documents are required
• Legal advice
• Buying a room in an apartment using maternity capital
• How to find out the cadastral value of a room in a communal apartment

Advantages and disadvantages

Before deciding to purchase a room in a communal apartment, it is worth studying all the pros and cons of such a property, thereby saving yourself from unpleasant surprises in the future.

The advantages of the room are:

1. Low cost compared to separate apartments (even studio type).
2. Possibility of investing small sums of money - a room can be bought for little money and rented out daily or for a long period of time (in this case, it is important to take into account the level of demand for housing - preference should be given to rooms near which there is a train station, educational institution, or enterprise where employees come - shift workers or business travelers, etc.);
3. Possibility of obtaining registration in a specific city. Despite the fact that the law allows Russian citizens to freely move around its territory and receive any services (for example, medical or educational) in any city, in practice it is not so easy to get to a clinic or enroll a child in a kindergarten without registration. Having bought a room, you can register in it and continue to live in more comfortable conditions (for example, in a rented apartment).

In addition to the advantages, the rooms have a number of obvious (and very significant) disadvantages :

1. Low liquidity of real estate. Selling a room is quite difficult - in most cities there is active construction of new residential buildings; buyers prefer to purchase apartments there – with discounts from the developer, you can buy a small studio for a very affordable amount.
2. Shared bathroom, toilet and kitchen. They will have to be shared with your neighbors, and no one will care that you are late for work or school, and you urgently need to wash your face and have breakfast.
3. Neighbours. They are different - perhaps you will be lucky and the owners of the neighboring rooms will be quiet and polite, but practice shows that most often people with not the best lifestyle and attitude towards others live in communal apartments.
4. Difficulty in obtaining a mortgage loan. The collateral for the mortgage is the purchased housing - banks are not particularly interested in rooms, which is why they are reluctant to lend to such mortgagees. You can get a consumer loan, but it has higher interest rates than a mortgage. In addition, in such a situation, you will not be able to take advantage of the preferential programs that apply to mortgage housing.

Cost of the appraiser's service

The final amount that the appraiser will have to pay is influenced by two groups of circumstances: the general condition of the property and the individual characteristics of the room.

The first group includes:

• location of the house;
• condition of the surrounding area;
• the condition of the entrance, apartment, utility networks, their area and length;
• number of neighbors;
• type of building.

The second group includes:

• availability of repairs;
• condition of the room;
• its area;
• the presence of a loggia/balcony.

This is what the estimated cost of work in Moscow and the region looks like.

Processing time is 2-3 days.

More information in the article “Cost of appraising an apartment.”

Features and pitfalls

​When purchasing a separate room in an apartment, you should understand how it differs from the share of an apartment owned by one person as shared ownership.
Shared ownership is the division of property with the definition of shares belonging to each of its owners (Clause 2 of Article 244 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). The share does not have clear boundaries - the documents cannot indicate that one of the owners owns the bedroom, and the second - the living room. Officially, shares can only be fixed in quantitative terms - for example, 14.0 and 18.0 square meters. meters respectively. Moreover, such a division will not at all mean that the co-owners own the bedroom and living room - this is where the difficulty in determining the share lies.

In order to sell exactly part of the apartment (a separate room), it is necessary to divide this apartment and allocate a separate share from it . This procedure is carried out in accordance with the rules of Art. 252 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, according to clause 2 of which a participant in shared ownership has the right to demand the allocation of his share from it. To do this, you will need to conclude an appropriate agreement with all apartment owners. Based on this agreement, Rosreestr will register the ownership of the allocated share, i.e. for a separate room (or several rooms). If the remaining apartment owners do not agree to conclude such an agreement, the share will have to be allocated through the court. The basis for registering ownership of the room in this case will be a court decision made in favor of the allocated owner.

Be careful when purchasing - shares are cheaper than separate rooms for which ownership is registered, but they will also bring a lot of problems to their owner. In particular, the share cannot be sold without the consent of the remaining owners, who have a pre-emptive right to purchase it (Article 250 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). In addition, you will have to determine the procedure for using the rooms in the apartment, because in fact, according to the documents, a specific room will not be assigned to you.

You might also want to read:

• How to allocate a share in a privatized apartment
• Allocation of a share in an apartment through the court
• The procedure for allocating the marital share

Where will the letter arrive?

The tax office informs a person about the amount that he has to pay in two ways. Either sends a postal notification or an electronic one to the taxpayer’s personal account. If you have registered a personal account on the website nalog.ru, all notifications are sent only there.

Russians are informed about four types of taxes, but not everyone receives payments for each item. For example, only car owners pay transport tax. A notification may come about personal property tax, transport tax, land tax and personal income tax in terms of tax not withheld by tax agents.

Procedure

To buy a separate room, you must:

1. Select a suitable property. It is important to assess the condition of the room and apartment as a whole, make sure that no unauthorized redevelopment has been carried out in the room, study the area and existing infrastructure (shops, kindergartens, schools, etc.), and get to know your future neighbors.
2. If you decide to purchase a share in an apartment, make sure that its owner has offered the other owners to buy out this share and has received a written refusal. If you are purchasing a separate room, you can skip this step.
3. Check the documents for the room (read about the list of these documents below).
4. Conclude a purchase and sale agreement.
5. Register the agreement with Rosreestr and obtain ownership of the room (a certificate of ownership is no longer issued - instead you will receive an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate).

Is it possible to evaluate a room online?

Now there are many services where you can estimate the value of real estate without leaving your home. Such services are a small electronic calculator that analyzes the condition of the living space according to criteria such as country and city of location, street, house number, year of construction, number of floors, condition, water supply and area. The service evaluation methodology also includes analysis of ad databases and directories.

An online calculator helps you avoid expensive independent experts and significantly save your time. All you need to do is fill out the required fields and get the exact cost of housing, without markups and based on the market value.

What documents are required

Before concluding a contract for the sale and purchase of a room, ask the seller for the following documents:

• a document confirming that the seller has ownership rights to a share in the apartment or to a separate room;
• notarized refusals of other property owners to purchase a share;
• technical and cadastral documentation for housing;
• certificates of absence of debt on utility bills;
• certificate of residents registered in the apartment;
• consent of the guardianship and trusteeship authority to sell the room (if the homeowners include minor children).

You can draw up a purchase and sale agreement yourself, or you can seek help from a qualified lawyer. If you decide to compose it yourself, you can download a template of the finished document from our website. Remember that the contract must include the following information:

• passport data of the parties to the contract - the seller and the buyer;
• subject of the agreement (a share of an apartment or a separate room, with its full description);
• contract price (the cost of the room that the buyer will pay to the seller);
• settlement procedure;
• specific date for the actual transfer of living space from the seller to the buyer;
• terms of termination of the contract;
• liability of the parties for non-compliance with the terms of the contract;
• date of drawing up the document and signatures of its parties.

The real estate purchase and sale agreement must be registered with Rosreestr.

Download the contract for the sale and purchase of a room in a communal apartment

Agreement for the sale and purchase of a share in an apartment

Dorm or communal apartment?

A dormitory and a communal apartment are two types of housing that involve the joint residence of several non-relative families in one property.

And although each owner of such a room has his own isolated living space, they regularly have to deal with neighbors. The thing is that the communal apartment has a shared kitchen and bathroom. It is in these types of housing that various conflicts often arise between neighbors, which often end in the commission of crimes or administrative violations.

A dormitory is legally considered a place for temporary residence, but in fact this has not been the case for a long time . There are dormitories for students, families and workers.

It is impossible to buy a room in a student dormitory; they are not put up for sale; they belong to educational institutions. But rooms in family and work hostels have been selling for a long time. Therefore, you can purchase just such a room if you wish.

According to Art. 92 of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, dormitories belong to the country’s special housing stock, therefore they are not subject to alienation into ownership . You can sell a room in a dormitory only if it is transferred by the municipality to another category of residential premises. Therefore, it is important to check the legal status of a dorm room before purchasing.

A communal apartment is an ordinary apartment in which several families live . Such real estate is freely sold on the market and costs much less than isolated housing. Buying a room in a communal apartment is much simpler than buying a room in a dormitory.

Pros and cons of such a deal

In order to answer the question of how to properly buy a room in a communal apartment or hostel, you need to weigh the pros and cons. This is a risky business, as the procedure has its own legal subtleties.

Is it possible to buy a room in a dorm with maternity capital? You can spend maternity capital to buy a room in a hostel only if the facility has been removed from the specialized housing stock by the municipality.

It is quite permissible to buy a room in a communal apartment at the expense of maternal funds, the main thing is that the square meter area complies with accepted standards.

You can buy a room with your saved funds or with a mortgage. Banks freely issue loans for the purchase of rooms in apartments if the potential client meets all the bank’s requirements as a borrower.

The following advantages of such a deal should be noted:

• own housing makes it possible to save on renting an apartment or room;
• a room costs much less than a whole apartment;
• subsequently the room will be easy to rent out, especially for daily rent;
• the amount of utility bills will be insignificant.

If suddenly your hostel is demolished due to its dilapidated condition, all residents will be provided with new housing or monetary compensation. And this often happens with hostels.

When selling a room in a dorm, you do not need to obtain the consent of your neighbors, unlike selling a room in a communal apartment.

Purchasing square meters in a hostel also has its disadvantages, which, unfortunately, outweigh the advantages:

1. Neighbors who often lead an antisocial lifestyle, drink or use drugs.
2. Worn-out building engineering systems - dormitories usually have rusty old pipes, dangerous wiring, lack of an elevator, and generally very poor repairs.
3. Inflated cost per square meter - although a room costs less than an apartment, per square meter the price is often higher than in ordinary housing.
4. Illiquidity of the property - selling a dorm room is very difficult.
5. Usually it is necessary to carry out a major overhaul of the purchased room for further living in it.

The owner of the room can even install a separate bathroom for himself. This way he will significantly reduce his contact time with neighbors and improve his quality of life.

Legal advice

If you decide to purchase a room, carefully study our tips - they will be useful to you:

1. We have already talked about this, and yet - keep in mind that buying a share in an apartment does not mean that you acquire ownership of a certain room, even if the area of ​​this room corresponds to the area of ​​the share you purchased. If you want to allocate such a share into a separate independent room, you will have to obtain the consent of the other homeowners or go to court.
2. Do not agree if the realtor offers you to circumvent the legal requirement for a pre-emptive right to buy out a share by concluding a gift agreement. You will still have to give the money to the owner of the property, and if this fact becomes known to interested parties (for example, other owners whose consent was not received during the sale), the gift agreement may be declared invalid. The room will have to be returned, but there are no guarantees that the seller will return the purchase price to you - there is a risk of being left without real estate and without money.
3. Request all possible certificates - in particular, documents stating that among the owners there are no incapacitated or minor citizens, and if there are any, documents confirming the consent of the guardianship and trusteeship authorities for the sale.

Step-by-step instruction

You need to act consistently, and the question of how to buy a room will cease to be a problem.

• Enter into an agreement with a real estate agency or look for housing yourself.
• Check the object. Pay attention to the condition of the housing: the year the house was built, the state of communications, the area, the presence of infrastructure, and most importantly, the neighbors, because you will have to live next to them and meet them every day. Seemingly good-natured and sociable people may turn out to be anything but, so you need to be on the safe side. Word of mouth will help - neighbors can tell you a lot about the inhabitants of the apartment. If the police are often called, or other unpleasant precedents occur, then it is better to forget about concluding a deal.
• Check documents:

1. Familiarize yourself with the documents on ownership and the basis for purchasing the living space.
2. Ask the owner to provide a certificate stating that he is not registered with the PND (this will eliminate doubts about the citizen’s legal capacity).
3. Require an extract from the house register: problems may arise if the interests of minor citizens are violated (transactions involving minors must be approved by guardianship specialists).
4. Ask for a certificate stating that the apartment has not been seized and is not under bail.
5. Request notarized approval for the transaction from the second spouse - disposal of common property occurs only with the approval of the legal half.

• Wait until the seller presents the documents and sign the contract.
• Contact a notary to certify documents.
• Carry out calculations. A reliable way is to transfer funds through a safe deposit box. Cash payments are used less frequently - this form of payment is more risky. Cashless payment is also practiced. Both parties are present at the time of debiting and crediting funds.
• Pay the state fee.
• To register ownership rights, contact the specialists of the Rosreestr division.

The acceptance certificate is a document that marks the transfer of the apartment. It indicates the condition in which the apartment is being transferred and states that there are no complaints.

Buying a room in an apartment using maternity capital

The procedure for purchasing a room using maternity capital funds is carried out in the manner described above, but at the same time it has some nuances:

1. You can buy a room using capital only after the child for whom it was issued turns three years old (Part 6, Article 7 of the Federal Law “On Additional...” dated December 29, 2006 No. 256-FZ). If the room is purchased with a mortgage, or the mortgage loan was issued before receiving capital, this rule does not apply - you can invest money in real estate immediately after the birth of a child (Part 6.1, Article 7 of Federal Law No. 256).
2. In the purchased room, children must be allocated shares (clause “d”, clause 8 of the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation “On the Rules ..." dated December 12, 2007 No. 862) - this means that there will be even more components in an already fragmented apartment.

Many people think that it is impossible to buy a home from a close relative using government money. In fact, this is not so - buying a room in an apartment from relatives is allowed: the legislation does not contain prohibitions on such transactions. This fact is confirmed by the Letter of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation “On certain issues...” dated October 22, 2010 No. d-23-3764, in which the Ministry points out the impossibility of alienating housing acquired using maternity capital funds in favor of close relatives of a minor, while allowing for the possibility acquisition by a minor (or, more precisely, by his parents on his behalf and in his interests) of such housing.

How to find out the cadastral value of a room in a communal apartment

Information about the cadastral value of a room can be obtained by ordering an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate. This can be done on the official website of Rosreestr, using the “Reference information on real estate objects online” service. Please note that if the room is not allocated from the apartment, you will not find it in the Rosreestr database - you will only be able to obtain information about the cost of the entire apartment as a whole. If the share is removed from the property and, as a result, is an independent piece of real estate, the Rosreestr service will be useful. You can find the necessary information by the housing cadastral number or by its actual address.

If the cadastral value of the room is not determined, you will need to invite an appraiser . A specialist will inspect the property and determine its cadastral value. This information will be useful, for example, when selling a room - to conclude a deal, it is important to know how much the property is worth. Please note that most often a room in a communal apartment costs less than part of an apartment of the same square footage could cost if the apartment is sold as a whole. For example, if an apartment worth 1 million rubles has two rooms with the same area, each of these rooms separately will not cost 500 thousand rubles. This is explained by the fact that the whole apartment has more value for the owner than its separate part, which will have to be used side by side with the other residents.

Neighbors as a pricing factor

Often it is the morals and habits of neighbors that make an overall decent room unsaleable (hence the impressive range in prices for rooms with similar characteristics).

The first thing you need to do when choosing a communal dwelling to suit your taste is to look closely at it, agree on the use of the kitchen and bathroom, and find out about your plans for life.

Experienced realtors have long noticed: the fewer neighbors there are in a communal apartment, the more complex the relationship. In an apartment for three or four families or a dormitory with long-standing “dormitory” traditions, it is often easier to agree on organizing a shared life than with one single neighbor.

But even if your possible “partners” are charming and pleasant in all respects, do not rush to rejoice. The average communal apartment is a walk-through yard: owners and residents change more often than in separate apartments.