The State Duma proposed banning advertising of apartments under the guise of housing

The State Duma has developed a bill that prohibits advertising of real estate without indicating whether the properties offered for sale are housing. About it write “Izvestia” with a link to a copy of the document.

The bill is planned to be submitted to the State Duma in the near future. One of the authors of the initiative, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services Svetlana Razvorotneva, noted that advertising often does not contain information “about the status of real estate, namely apartments,” which is why citizens think that they are buying residential premises, but in fact they are buying apartments.

According to her, deputies regularly receive requests from citizens with questions about why they cannot use the school and clinic at their place of residence, as well as about large bills for housing services and property taxes. As a result, it turns out that they purchased apartments that are not housing, Razvorotneva explained.

According to the bill, violators are planned to be fined up to 500,000 rubles.

The Ministry of Construction reported that the department has not yet received the initiative of deputies. They added that to develop the bill on apartments, a working group was created, which included representatives of the State Duma, the Moscow government, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Ministry of Construction and Rosreestr.

As Izvestia notes, the concept of apartments is not enshrined in legislation. Such premises are not housing, so they usually cost 15–30% less than apartments. At the same time, it is impossible to obtain registration in the apartments, and therefore not to use social infrastructure, including kindergartens, hospitals and schools. Tariffs for housing and communal services in apartments are 15–20% higher than in housing, and the real estate tax rate is about 2% of the cost (for apartments – from 0.1%).

They have been trying to legislate the status of apartments since 2016. Then the Ministry of Construction proposed to equate them to residential premises in apartment buildings; a corresponding bill was introduced to the State Duma in 2018, but the project was not discussed in parliament. After this, there were initiatives to allow temporary registration in apartments, as well as to prohibit the construction of apartments and approve the residential status of already constructed objects.

In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed to legislate the legal status of apartments. In the same year, a bill was introduced to the State Duma that defines a new category of real estate – multifunctional buildings, apartments will be equated to housing. However, as Izvestia recalled, the initiative did not even pass the first reading; State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin sent it for revision.