The Marker, Adi Cohen, 16.10.2020

Shlomi Heisler
Position: Head of the Real Estate Registration and Settlement Authority
Age: 47
Status: Married + 5
Previous positions: Supervisor of Real Estate Registration in the Authority, Advocate in the Tax Department of the State Attorney's Office and in the Real Estate Department of the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office
Education: Bachelor of Laws from Bar-Ilan University

Shlomi Heisler, head of the Real Estate Registration Authority at the Ministry of Justice, fears - probably with a fair amount of justice - that readers of this newspaper will immediately classify him as a gray-haired clerk. The phrase "registration in the taboo", he explains, may sound like a purely technical system of registration of rights and transactions.

In practice, he declares, the activities of PA officials relate to every real estate transaction carried out in Israel, including dealing with sting and fraud cases - which are made possible due to the chaos that has prevailed in the Israeli registry system for many years. But some of it is also related to the Israeli bureaucratic culture, in which the lack of coordination between the various bodies has been celebrated for years and only in the last two years has it shown signs of improvement.

So let's start at the beginning: how many properties in Israel are not registered in the tax register at all? And where is the most serious problem?

"This phenomenon exists mainly in densely populated areas with many costs and ancient drawings - such as the center of Tel Aviv, the center of Jerusalem, Acre and Haifa. For example, in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem we have a case of 1,200 square meters that are jointly owned by 300 people. Some have received ownership documents from the Ottoman and British authorities, most of them second and third generation in the neighborhood - and it is almost impossible to know who is who and what belongs to them. When those apartment owners want to sell or get a building permit, it is very problematic. A similar story also exists in the Hatikva neighborhood in Tel Aviv, and for years this has been one of the significant barriers to the development of the neighborhood and its renewal. "

Nachlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem Photo: Emil Salman

But the year is 2020, how is it possible that a property in Israel is still registered in registers from the Turkish period?

"The most common cases of real estate fraud in Israel are impersonating registered property owners or lawyers and forging inheritance orders."

"For years, the rights to land in Israel have been registered in the Turkish system. According to this method, it may be known that you have a property, but you will know exactly where it is. Then the British arrived in 1920 and invented the taboo registration method we know today. "Since then, a complex procedure of mapping, cost clarification and regulation has been carried out here, but it continues to this day. In most lands, the procedure has been completed, but there are still several thousand apartments that are still registered under the old method and constitute about 4% of all land in Israel."

For apartment owners, how dramatic is it that the apartment is not registered?

"When an unregistered apartment is registered as regulated, it will be very difficult to sell it, inherit it, or even make an urban renewal or other renovation that requires a building permit. These barriers lower the appraised market value of these apartments by about 10%. Another problem is that these apartment owners "They are more exposed to fraud, because in these cases an opening is created for the transfer of rights to third parties, while it is more difficult for the property owner himself to prove ownership of it."

Forgery of inheritance orders and deeds of sale

What are the most common real estate scams?

"The most common cases of real estate fraud in Israel are impersonation of registered property owners or lawyers and forgery of inheritance orders. For that matter, only recently have two such cases come to us - in one of them a person asked to register an apartment under a forged inheritance order; "We have a bill of sale for a transaction he allegedly made, while it turned out that the other party who signed the bill died much earlier. In general, forgery of bills of sale, inheritance orders, and signatures of lawyers are unfortunately quite common."

The Old City in Acre. Those photographed have nothing to do with the article Photo: Ofer Vaknin

How common?

"Today I catch at least 20 such cases of real estate fraud a year - which is a significant improvement over two or three years earlier, so there have been many dozens of cases."

You claim that the situation has improved. What has actually changed?

"Today, for example, we no longer request the inheritance order from the parties to the transaction, but directly from the inheritance register, and we also created an interface with the Ministry of the Interior and the Israel Police that warns us if a party dies. In addition. "Every god significantly reduces the scope of fraud."

Still, do property owners have how to protect themselves?

"When an unregistered apartment is regulated, it will be very difficult to sell it, inherit it, or even make it an urban renewal."

"In the last two years, we have developed a technology service to prevent fraud, which any citizen with a property can register for online and receive an alert if they 'touched' the property. This service is currently being piloted in Tel Aviv, but later it should be accessible to everyone. "Currently only for those who hold an Israeli credit card and ID card, but because it is clear to us that many of the target population are foreign residents or adults who do not hold credit - we allow registration for this service in front of the bureau, and market it in day care centers and sheltered housing."

The Hatikva neighborhood in Tel Aviv Photo: Moti Milrod

Apart from the historic registration system, contractors do not always regulate the registration of apartment owners. What are the meanings of this?

"Here is another story, which does not refer to the registration of the land, but to the registration of condominiums and division by apartments and property owners. For years this process was not done well enough, because the responsibility for registration of properties was not defined and enforced. "Records in the name of their owners, but in groups as a condominium, or in the name of the state or the contractor. Only in recent years has the responsibility of contractors to register the apartments in the Sale Law enshrined, and now fines are also distributed to those who do not.

In the end everything rolls into prices

Entrepreneurs in the industry claim that the reason for the delays in registering apartments lies in the procedure itself - which is cumbersome and lengthy.

"This statement has long been incorrect. Until two or three years ago it was really a lengthy procedure, caused by a lack of overlap between entities, but much has changed since then. For that matter, if in the past it took several months to register a sale - today it is only six days. In more complex records, it now only takes a few weeks, with much less need for foot classes and a headache. "

"In the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem, we have a case of 1,200 square meters that are jointly owned by 300 people. It is almost impossible to know who is who and what belongs to them "

Still, in international indices, we are not exactly at the top of the list.

"True. In the last four years we have risen in the ranking of the World Bank Index (the index that examines the ease of doing business) from 132 to 75 - which is a meteoric rise - but we are still far from first place and we have another significant way to do.

"One of the problematic points in this context is the large number of entities in the registration process - such as the local authority and the tax authorities. In other countries, a person purchasing a property is not required for all the permits and documents requested here. "One-stop shop" - and we are dealing with the various authorities in the place of the citizen - but this procedure is only at the beginning. "

Beyond the awkwardness of transactions, do delays in registration have an impact on the projects themselves and prices?

"Certainly, it also has an effect on apartment prices. For example, in a situation where an entrepreneur approaches a project when there is no regulated registration on the land, he will probably not be able to get a mortgage from the bank - which will bring him to external financing channels, which are usually more expensive. The same expensive loans are rolling into apartment prices. "

What are the volumes of price increases we are talking about?

"If an entrepreneur can pledge the land from day one and take out a bank mortgage, it can reach millions of shekels saved on interest that he will have to pay on external loans. There is no doubt that a quicker and simpler procedure saves costs."