Apart from agricultural land foreign citizens are able to buy property in Albania without facing any restrictions.

The buying procedure in general involves signing numerous contracts – first a reservation contract, an undertaking contract, an introductory contract and the concrete sale-purchase contract.

Once signing the reservation contract, the property is reserved for approximately 4 weeks by the buyer. This time is then used by the buyer (through the lawyer) to carry out careful checks on the property.

Although there is no obligation to have a lawyer for a property purchase in Albania, it is always suggested to use one. During the communist era (before 1990) a lot of property was confiscated by the government. However since the 1990s roughly 85% of the confiscated properties have been returned to their original owners. The outstanding 15%, situated primarily in Tirana and coastal areas are still in the process of being resolved.

To prevent a familiar problem when buying property in Albania it is highly recommended that the buyer’s lawyer must certify that the property in question is really in full ownership of the present seller and is free from any liens.

The quality of construction is also an issue at times. This is due to the fact that some developers decide to take shortcuts when building.
Once all the required documents are obtained, the ‘undertaking contract’ is signed by the buyer and seller. This indicates their agreement to buy and to sell the property in that order. And usually would include information of the timescales, payment conditions, and price conditions of the acquisition. The undertaking contract is signed in a Notary office; this is where a public official is appointed by the government to notarize legal documents.

It is usually common practice that once the introductory contract is signed a 10% down payment is paid for second hand properties. Off-plan developments usually require a bit more as down payment, this could be anywhere between 20%-40%.

To get to the final sale-purchase contract the property needs to have been paid for fully and then the contract can be signed in front of a Notary. To finalise the sale and for the titles deed to be transferred to the new owner the final contract is then registered at the Office of the Immoveable Property Registration.

Albanian-hand-shake

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Buying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.