Experts named the regions whose residents choose notarial transactions at a distance

The most popular connection was Moscow – Crimea

Muscovites are increasingly concluding notarial transactions at a distance with residents of the south and north of Russia – Crimea, Krasnodar Territory, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol and Krasnoyarsk Territory. At the end of the year, a record number of remote transactions were concluded between Moscow and Crimea (4%). In second place was the link between Moscow and Krasnodar Territory (3%). The northern capital closes the top three, whose residents also managed to experience the benefits of remote transactions with Crimeans and Muscovites (1.6%).

Over the past year, demand for the remote format has doubled. If we compare it with the indicators of the first year of operation of the notary “remote service”, its popularity has increased ninefold. There is practically no region left in Russia where the remote format would be out of work.

“Notaries across the country have experience in remote transactions, from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka,” says Advisor to the President of the Federal Notary Chamber for Information Technology Mikhail Mukovozov. – This format has been mastered in hard-to-reach areas, in new territories, in cities with a population of over a million, and in small towns. Moreover, the option of a trilateral transaction has also come into practice, when notaries from three constituent entities of Russia are involved. In particular, such precedents already exist in the notary chambers of the Amur, Astrakhan, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Rostov, Samara, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk regions, chambers of the Crimea and Tatarstan, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Perm and Stavropol territories.

For example, two co-owners (one from Samara, the other from Novosibirsk) remotely sold an apartment that they had inherited to a resident of Angarsk. The property was located exactly in the buyer’s region of residence, and the possibility of remote verification of the transaction allowed sellers to avoid long flights, difficulties with accommodation and other problems. In another example from our expert, a tripartite remote transaction concerned the allocation of shares in an apartment purchased with maternal capital funds and the subsequent sale of this housing. The buyer and the property itself were located in Krasnoyarsk, two owners (husband and wife) were in Sochi, and the third owner, their adult daughter, was in St. Petersburg.

If we talk about areas of application, the remote format of transactions, as before, is most popular when it comes to real estate transactions. The second place is occupied by the sphere of marriage and family legal relations, the third – corporate transactions.

If you look at the reasons why applicants most often turn to the remote option of certifying a contract, the most common and obvious argument here will be distance. “In the case of remote communication, the parties to the transaction are freed from the need to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers to meet each other, save on tickets and accommodation, and do not face the problem of taking time off or vacation from work. In fact, the only thing that is required from each participant in the transaction is to find 30-40 minutes to visit a convenient notary office. This is exactly how long it takes on average to verify a transaction remotely,” comments Sergei Polyakov, a member of the commission of the Federal Notary Chamber.

Notaries, as in the classic version, personally communicate with clients who are parties to the agreement, find out their real will, talk in detail about the legal consequences of the transaction and carry out all the necessary verification actions. At the same time, notaries involved in the transaction bear joint and several full property liability for the quality and result of their work. In addition, during remote transactions, video recording is a prerequisite, which provides additional guarantees of protection against subsequent challenges. As a result, a remote transaction today has actually become a reliable and progressive alternative to a risky transaction through a representative, where the notarial form is used only for the power of attorney, and not for the contract itself.

– The idea of ​​​​introducing such a progressive and popular format for citizens and businesses into the practice of Russian notaries began to be worked out back in 2018. Remote transactions have become one of the key points of the concept of the so-called second wave of digitalization of notaries, the preparation of which was carried out by a special working group, says Mikhail Mukovozov.

Residents of hard-to-reach and sparsely populated areas should be identified as a separate target audience for the remote format. For them, the option of traveling to another city may simply not be available due to weather conditions, difficulties with transport links and other features of the places where they live.