Cost of transactions for sale of land plots recorded only in half of cases – KSE expert

KYIV. Aug 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Data on the cost of land purchase and sale transactions are recorded in the State Register of Property Rights to Immovable Property in 54% of cases, which makes it difficult to obtain reliable statistical data on the functioning of the land market and their analysis, expert of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Oleh Nivievsky said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

"In almost 54% of cases, we see the fixed prices in the Register of Rights to Immovable Property. This is already a matter of cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, on how the notary works, and other organizational things. Ukrainian legislation provides for the direct registration of prices for land plots. In a certain aspect, this is a problem, and we need to work on this so that prices are fixed in 100% of cases," the expert said.

He stressed that the relevant departments need to work on how data on land transactions are added into the relevant registers, as well as how unified the information contained therein is.

"But I hope that this issue is technical, and it will be resolved over time, we will not have such issues, and 100% of transactions will have price registration," Nivievsky said.

He also clarified that the figure of 54% is the national average, which differs significantly in different regions. So, in Khmelnytsky region, the register recorded the cost of 78.7% of transactions for the purchase and sale of land, Donetsk region – 75.4%, Kyiv – 75.3%, while in Luhansk region – 12.5%, Zakarpattia region – 23.2%, and Ivano-Frankivsk region – 28.0%.

In turn, Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Dzioba, participating in the press conference, explained the lack of data on the cost of transactions for the purchase and sale of land by peculiarities of keeping the register.

"In order not to create the feeling that someone is trying to hide something: there are peculiarities of maintaining the Register of Property Rights to Immovable Property, there is common property, and it happens sometimes that one contract fixes the sale of several land plots. Thus, the notary simply does not know what price to indicate. Therefore, the column remains free, and the register itself does not technically oblige to fill in this column, which is why such situations arise," the deputy minister said.

As reported, since the launch of the land market on July 1 and as of August 29, some 10,680 land transactions were carried out in Ukraine for agricultural plots with a total area of 23,330 hectares. In terms of the total area of land plots sold, Poltava region is in the lead with 2,720 hectares, followed by Kharkiv (2,620 hectares), Kirovohrad (2,070 hectares), Dnipropetrovsk (1,870 hectares) and Kherson (1,720 hectares) regions.