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Explained: Similarities and Differences Between Land Registry Digitisation and Restoration of Damaged Records

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The Directorate of Cadastral Affairs is working on expanding the digitisation of the Land Registry, while also restoring real estate documents that are partially or completely lost or damaged. Despite the significant differences between these two processes, they are carried out side by side and, in some cases, complement one another.

Digitising the Land Registry involves transferring real estate registries from their paper form to a digital format, and establishing electronic connections for real estate services across all provinces. The goal is to protect information, facilitate its handling, speed up real estate transactions, and make it easier for citizens to access real estate services. The digitisation of Land Registries is based on the provisions of Legislative Decree No. 12 of 2016, which mandates the preparation of a digital version of the Land Record by the public body responsible for keeping legally certified real estate registers.

On the other hand, the restoration of real estate documents is governed by the provisions of Law No. 33 of 2017. The law defines restoration as a series of administrative and judicial procedures that result in the issuance of a reliable replacement for the damaged document or the completion of one of its missing elements. There are two types of restoration: administrative restoration, when there are sufficient documents available at the relevant Directorate of Cadastral Affairs office; and judicial restoration, which is used in cases of total destruction of documents.

Despite the differences in their objectives, both processes focus on the content of the real estate document. Digitisation is concerned with converting paper data into electronic files, while restoration aims to recover data based on the available documents held by the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs and those provided by the rightful owners. The connection between the two is that the digitisation aims to achieve the electronic archiving of the Land Registry, which in turn will help resolve the issues related to the damage or deterioration of real estate paper-documents.

Decree No. 12 of 2016 requires that the digitisation of Land Registry takes place in areas selected by the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, with the approval of the Minister of Local Administration and Environment. For this process to proceed, the original paper-based real estate documents and records must be present in the areas where the digitisation is to be carried out. However, if these documents are partially or fully damaged, the digitisation process cannot occur until the restoration of the real estate paper documents, as stipulated in Decree No. 33 of 2017, has been completed. In other words, digitisation cannot be carried out in areas with damaged records until they have undergone reconstitution.

Decree No. 12 of 2016 gives the digital version legal authority, making it the basis for creating a paper version of the land registries. However, the digital copy must be derived from the original paper registries. If the paper copy from which the digital version was made becomes damaged, the digital version will serve as the reference for creating a new paper copy. Additionally, the digital version is considered the official source for all updates and changes made to the real estate record.

The decree does not address the situation where the electronic data is damaged. Instead, it specifies that three copies of the electronic storage medium must be created, with one deposited at the Central Bank and the other two stored in different locations, known to and supervised by the relevant public authority.

Procedurally, once the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs completes the digitisation of a specific area, an identical paper copy of the digital version, including the land registries and documents that have been digitised, must be published. Under Decree No. 12 of 2016, an announcement must be made in the hall of the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, the governorate, and the administrative unit, detailing the property numbers, real estate areas, owners’ names, and registered notations. Following this, the Directorate sets a four-month period for objections to be submitted to the Civil Court of First Instance, whose decisions can be appealed to the Court of Appeal in the governorate. In such cases, the decision of the Court of Appeal is final. Anyone who did not have the opportunity to object to the real estate digitisation can file a lawsuit with the civil court, supported by evidence, within five years of the objection period’s end.

According to Decree No. 12, one of the cases where an objection to the digitisation process is permitted is the omission of registering a real estate right in the day-to-day register, which is a component of the land register and complements the ownership ledger. The day-to-day register records events in chronological order by their date and type, and each entry is assigned a sequential number within the journal’s 200 pages. Each page is certified by a judge from the Court of First Instance, and corrections are made exclusively in red ink, with proper signatures for any corrections. Objections may also be raised if an event recorded in the day-to-day register was not transferred to the Land Record or its digital version.

In the process of reconstituting a real estate document, the real estate judge issues a decision specifying the damaged document, the property number, the real estate area, and the parts of the document that need to be reconstituted. A six-month period is given for interested parties to submit any documents they have that support their rights to the property mentioned in the damaged document. All this information is published in the Official Gazette and two local newspapers. If no objections are raised during this period, the real estate judge confirms the real estate documents submitted by the rights holders and orders the creation of new land records to replace the damaged ones. Based on this, the judge issues a final decision confirming ownership, which cannot be appealed. In the case of an objection, the rightful owner or their legal representative may submit the objection, supported by documents proving their rights. The real estate court considers the objections within a two-month period.

Explained: Chronology of the Dissolution of State Farms

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State farms are lands owned by the state, which the state invests directly or leases to others for specific periods to cultivate agreed-upon crops. The state provided these farms with paid agricultural services at official rates, i.e., at subsidised prices, such as seeding, fertilising, harvesting and irrigation. The state also purchased their crops.

The concept of state farms is often confused with other state-owned and managed establishments such as poultry farms, dairies, fish farms, and model villages. All of these are situated on lands expropriated by the state according to the Agrarian Reform Law No. 161 of 1958. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to determine the extent of state farmlands and the number of workers employed there.

The Agrarian Reform Law No. 61 of 1958 established a public institution named the Agrarian Reform Institution (in 1976, the institution was dissolved and replaced by the Directorate of State Property and Agricultural Reform affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Reform) to implement the Agrarian Reform Law and the state property laws. Law No. 61 of 1958 allowed the institution to retain some of the expropriated lands without distributing them to farmers, to carry out projects or establish facilities for the public benefit.

There are no official Syrian figures on the extent of land expropriated by the state during the agrarian reform period, nor on what was redistributed to farmers or what land was used to establish state farms. Some circulated figures indicate that the state expropriated about 1.5 million hectares of agricultural land, with more than 75 percent not distributed to the farmers by the mid-1970s when distribution stopped.

The first mention of state farms occurred when the Regional Leadership of Syria’s ruling Baath Party formed a committee named “Reconstruction of State Farms” under Resolution No. 521 in 1974. One of the committee’s most notable actions was establishing state farms in the area known as the Arab Belt, adjacent to the Syrian-Turkish border in the predominantly Kurdish Hassakeh province, to cause demographic change in the region.

In 2000, the Baath Party’s Regional Leadership issued Resolution No. 83, which included the dissolution of state farms and their distribution to beneficiaries. The reason for dissolving the farms was not justified. However, some opposition members considered it one of the propaganda measures accompanying the power transfer from the late President Hafez al-Assad to his son Bashar, suggesting a shift towards a more flexible and liberal policy. The dissolution of state farms meant transferring the ownership of their land to the identified beneficiaries, categorised into four groups:

  1. The employees working on those farms.
  2. Those who had land extorted before the state expropriated them and who became de facto tenants.
  3. Residents of villages adjacent to the farms.
  4. Farmers whose lands were submerged due to the construction of the Euphrates Dam.

However, a 2007 document (number 1682) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform indicated that the distribution of state farmlands had only been completed for some of the employees working on the farms. The document redefined the groups entitled to state farmlands, with a new order:

  1. Farmers whose lands were submerged by Lake Assad and the Baath Dam built in 1991 on the Khabour River south of Hassakeh.
  2. Those affected by the establishment of the Jabal AbdulAziz reserve in Hassakeh, which was declared by a decision of the Ministry of Agriculture No. 20 in 1993 and had its area modified several times (the last being by Ministry decision No. 27 in 2002, encompassing 50 villages with a population of 15,000).
  3. Farmers with suspended transactions, i.e., those who had applied for agricultural lands under agrarian reform but were not granted any due to the cessation of distribution operations in the 1970s.

It is unclear whether the state farmlands have been distributed to their beneficiaries at any recent stage, what the theoretical mechanisms and criteria for distribution are, or how the distributed areas were estimated. In the town of Maskanah in the Aleppo countryside, which included the Tishreen farm, farmers, during their efforts to obtain agricultural regulation documents, are still treated as beneficiaries of the lands and beneficiaries of Baath Party Regional Command Resolution No. 83 of 2000 – not as owners of the holdings they invest in. Therefore, an agricultural regulation document was exceptionally granted to the farmers of Maskanah for the current season, based on a physical inventory conducted by a specialised committee, indicating the absence of ownership documents.

In 2023, Malak Maktabi, the head of the Directorate of State Property and Agricultural Reform affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Reform, told the official newspaper Al-Jamahir that the directorate would register the usufruct shares in the Land Registry in the name of the beneficiary listed in the distribution decision. However, this task appears to be extremely complicated, as according to Ms Maktabi, the directorate is still in the process of completing expropriation procedures and paying compensation to those whose lands were expropriated. This means that the expropriation processes in the 1960s and 1970s have not yet concluded.

 

Staff Shortage Hinders Work at Daraa Cadastral Affairs Directorate

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The Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in the city of Daraa is experiencing a staff shortage due to the de facto resignations caused by low wages and the retirement of some employees. This has led to a backlog of unprocessed real estate transactions and delays in documenting and registering property incidents.

Two sub-departments for real estate documentation in the cities of Izraa and Sanamein, along with four real estate documentation offices in the rural areas of the governorate, are affiliated with the main directorate in the Daraa Al-Mahatta neighbourhood. Operations were partially halted during opposition control over Daraa between 2012-2018 but resumed after regime forces regained control of the governorate under the so-called reconciliation agreement in mid-2018. None of these offices or branches were damaged during the years of armed conflict.

However, the shortage of technical staff across the various departments of the directorate is now hindering many people’s desires to complete their real estate transactions that accumulated during the years of war, Basil Al-Jayoush, the director of the Daraa Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, told the official Al-Baath newspaper on November 14, 2023.

Mr Jayoush stated that the directorate currently operates with no more than 20 technical staff, including four engineers, to provide all real estate services to individuals and government entities. The director added that the directorate’s work is “on the edge of a cliff” following the retirement of the last employees of the Surveying Department at the end of 2023. The Surveying Department is essential to the directorate’s operations, requiring significant expertise and the ability to use specialised equipment for measuring land areas.

The Surveying Department provides essential surveying services, including area statement service, boundary statement service, property ownership statement for beautification and common ownership termination, supplying public entities with triangulation point coordinates, subdivision transactions, plot consolidation transactions, property unification transactions, subdivision plan transactions, and expropriation execution.

Mr Jayoush confirmed that the staff shortage in the Surveying Department has slowed down the completion of real estate transactions, calling for the replenishment of the department with new employees through recruitment calls.

A former directorate employee in Daraa told The Syria Report that the total number of staff across all departments decreased from about 33 to 20 during 2023. He explained that the Surveying Department alone lost five employees, i.e. all of its staff, in the last six months of 2023. Two of them reportedly resigned (because state institutions rarely accept resignation requests from their employees, resignations practically take the form of employees simply stopping coming to work) due to insufficient salary to cover transportation costs. Meanwhile, three were retired upon reaching the legal retirement age.

The former employee stated that the main problem is not with the recruitment calls but with the lack of incentives to apply for the jobs in the first place. Many experienced surveyors prefer to work independently as freelance surveyors without being tied to an official position.

A local correspondent for The Syria Report said there is no agreed-upon fixed pricing for the work of freelance surveyors. The fee is negotiated between the surveyor and the employer, based on factors such as the number of points that need to be marked to define boundaries, the size of the property, and the surveyor’s experience. Generally, a freelance surveyor charges a starting fee of SYP 300,000 to delineate the boundaries of a single property, which exceeds the monthly salary of an employee in the department. Freelance surveyors must have their own theodolite, a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes.

However, the duties of an official employee in the surveying department at the Cadastral Affairs directorate go far beyond those that a freelance surveyor can perform. For example, an official’s tasks include writing report minutes on disputes over the boundaries and areas of properties. In contrast, a freelance surveyor is not authorised to perform this task. Disputes over property boundaries have become common recently, with many property sales not officially registered with the Cadastral Affairs directorate. This leads to conflicts between sellers, buyers, and neighbours over the boundaries of the sold properties.

Another source explained that a second problem hindering recruitment in the surveying department of the Daraa directorate is the internal regulations that limit hiring in the surveying department to graduates of the Technical Engineering Institute (Intermediate Engineering Institute) affiliated with the Ministry of Higher Education. There is no branch of this institute in Daraa; instead, it is associated with the Civil Engineering Faculty at Damascus University. Since the 2011 uprising, there has been a significant decline in the number of students from Daraa studying at this institute due to harassment and arbitrary arrests of people from Daraa at security and military checkpoints. This has resulted in a shortage of recent graduates from the institute.

Calls to Subdivide Properties in Upscale District of Damascus

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According to pro-government media reports, during a regular meeting of the Damascus Governorate Council in mid-January 2024, members called for the subdivision and correction of descriptions for the Adawi and Eastern Tijara areas and the issuance of ownership deeds for their properties.

Nouri Salman, the director of the Provisional Land Register at the Damascus Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, explained to the semi-official Al-Watan newspaper that the subdivision and correction of descriptions for these properties are within the jurisdiction of the Damascus Directorate of Cadastral Affairs and the Damascus governorate. He added that to subdivide and correct the descriptions of these properties, a request must be submitted to the Damascus governorate to open a technical mandate for the horizontal subdivision of the area, followed by its vertical subdivision, the so-called “Building subdivision”, after which the deeds can be transferred from the Provisional Land Register to the Land Register in the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs.

The technical mandate is a process of technical inspection of a property to determine its boundaries on the ground, carried out by a committee from the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, with a representative from the administrative unit to which the property belongs. Opening a technical mandate means submitting a request to the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in the concerned governorate to schedule a date for the technical inspection of the property.

The correction of descriptions is an administrative transaction conducted by the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs upon request from the property owner. The process aims to match the property descriptions recorded in its Land Record with its actual condition. For example, a property may be recorded as agricultural land while it is actually a multi-storey building.

Meanwhile, the subdivision of a property is a technical transaction conducted by the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs based on a request from the property owners. The aim is to divide the property into separate and independent properties. The property subdivision process is conducted as if the property were commonly owned.

Horizontal division involves:

  • Splitting the land into plots prepared for construction.
  • Assigning each a number.
  • Entering them into the Provisional Land Register.

Subsequently, the owner of one of these plots can obtain a construction permit for a building with multiple floors and residences. After the building’s completion and the sale of these homes, the plot can be vertically subdivided, creating a new land record for each apartment within the building as an independent property. These real estate occurrences are then transferred from the Provisional Land Register to the Permanent Land Register.

The Eastern Tijara and Adawi areas in Damascus are an urban extension, partly informal, located east of Damascus city. Al-Tijara and Al-Adawi are considered upscale neighbourhoods in Damascus, known for their modern construction, spacious apartments, high prices, green spaces, parks, and public amenities. The extension of the area began in the 1950s on agricultural lands known as Al-Adawi orchards.

In Eastern Tijara and Adawi, there are three types of properties: first, licensed buildings on zoned land with ownership deeds, subdivided and registered in the Land Registry, each residence having an independent land record, allowing relatively easy sale and purchase unless there are restraints on disposal against it. Most of these buildings were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Second, particularly in the western part of the Eastern Tijara neighbourhood, are buildings licensed and constructed by housing cooperatives on zoned land. Most are subdivided horizontally, not vertically. These buildings were erected during the 1970s and 1980s. Reasons preventing the vertical subdivision of properties include the death of one of the owners and placing restraints on disposal mark on the entire original property until the heirs agree on dividing their shares or unresolved building violations. In such cases, the real estate occurrences are registered in the Provisional Land Legister using ownership documents issued by the Directorate of Housing Cooperation in the Ministry of Public Works and Housing to establish ownership and complete sale and purchase transactions. However, these are not transferred to the Land Registry because the property has not been subdivided vertically.

Thirdly, there are unlicensed buildings erected on zoned land more than 40 years ago in the far eastern part of the area. Still, they have not been horizontally subdivided and, therefore, not vertically subdivided either. These buildings were constructed in the 1980s, marked by construction chaos in Damascus, when landowners built on their plots before subdividing them horizontally into building-ready plots, yet adhered to the urban planning and building regulations, aiming for future licensing. In the area, there are multiple cases where a single piece of land has several buildings on it. However, it still remains as one property not subdivided into construction-ready plots. Therefore, all these buildings and the residences within them are still owned in common by their owners, with one land record. The process of horizontal subdivision has been hindered over time, especially with multiple building violations, generations of heirs, and restraints on disposal. Many of these homeowners have no proof of ownership other than court judgments affirming their purchase contracts.

According to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, there are hundreds of affected individuals in the second and third types of buildings, where these homeowners and residents cannot secure loans with their properties as collateral, obtain restoration permits, or sell them officially. The market value of these residences is much lower than their counterparts in the same area. Initiating a technical assignment process for description correction and subdivision is not as straightforward as local authorities claim. The Directorate of Cadastral Affairs requires all co-owners of a property to apply for description correction and subdivision, a hard task due to the presence of hundreds of heirs and their legal representatives, not to mention those who have emigrated or are absent.

Explained: Agricultural Regulation

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There is no precise definition for an agricultural regulation. However, it is a commonly used term for a notice issued to a farmer who owns their land. By obtaining this agricultural regulating document, the farmer gains access to government-subsidised agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertiliser, diesel fuel and a certificate of origin for the crop. The farmer can only obtain the agricultural regulation notice if they commit to planting specific crops like wheat, barley, cotton, and sugar beet following the annual agricultural plan approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform. The farmer is also required to sell the crop exclusively to the state. An agricultural regulating notice is not considered a property ownership deed per se.

Various laws and decisions mention agricultural regulation. Among these are the Agricultural Production Regulating Law No. 59 of 2005 and its executive instructions, amendments via Decree No. 28 of 2014 and Decree No. 14 of 2017, and the Ministry of Agriculture’s Decision No. 8/T of 2006 and its amendment via Decision No. 125/T of 2016.

It is not easy to define agricultural regulation terms from these laws and decisions, as the term can sometimes refer to the Ministry of Agriculture’s annual plan, sometimes to the notice granted to the farmer, and sometimes to the administrative procedure or application for obtaining agricultural regulating notice. Adding to this ambiguity is using terms on official websites such as “agricultural regulating procedure” and “entering into agricultural regulation,” which implies adherence to the annual agricultural plan.

Simply put, the agricultural regulating notice is the document that a farmer who owns their land (and sometimes also raises livestock) obtains by adhering to the annual agricultural plan. This notice allows the farmer to extract another document called the “agricultural licence,” which in turn entitles them to access facilities and guidance, and subsidised quotas of seeds, fertiliser, diesel fuel for agricultural use and feed sold at reduced prices and in quantities that match the size of the land and the number of animals. 

The validity period of the agricultural licence is five years and is renewable. In recent years, to renew the agricultural licence, it has been sufficient for the farmer to provide a written commitment that there has been no change in their previous information. If the agricultural plan is not followed, such as planting a different crop, the farmer is deprived of both the agricultural regulation notice and agricultural licence, and financial penalties are imposed.

The agricultural regulating notice is a prerequisite for applying for agricultural loans from the Agricultural Cooperative Bank and receiving compensation provided by the Fund for Mitigating the Impact of Drought and Natural Disasters on Agricultural Production.

To obtain an agricultural regulating notice, a farmer submits an “agricultural regulation” request to the Agricultural Extension Unit in their area, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture. The farmer must have a deed of ownership for their land or a real estate record from the Land Registry or citizen service centres. If they do not have such documents, any of the following documents may be substituted: a judicial ruling or decision with final judgment, a statement of land use for beneficiaries of agrarian reform, a judicial declaration of ownership, a certificate of land transactions for lands that have not undergone delimitation and census, a lease or sharecropping contract, a general or special power of attorney organised by a notary public, a statement of ownership from the land distribution committee for reclaimed lands not yet registered in the names of their owners in the Land Registry, or a retention and waiver statement issued by the Directorate of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform for owners covered by the agrarian reform law in specified and released areas.

Obtaining any of these documents, including the property deed, is not easy for many farmers, often due to the lands not being subdivided. Their ownership remaining in common, the processes of delimitation and census not being completed, the marks of Restraint on Disposal that prevent transactions, pending inheritance disputes, in addition to issues with agrarian reform laws that grant farmers the right to use the land rather than own it.

To resolve these complications, at the end of 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture agreed to accept the physical inspection notice as an alternative to ownership documents when submitting an agricultural regulating procedure. A physical inspection notice is an on-site inspection conducted by a committee from the Agricultural Extension Unit for the concerned land based on a request from the stakeholder.

Due to all these administrative and bureaucratic complexities, farmers’ interest in agricultural regulation in regime areas has declined over the past few years, especially with the reduction in their diesel, fertiliser, and seed quotas and the falling prices of crops set and purchased by the state. Many farmers have seen agricultural regulation as a losing venture, turning instead to more economically viable crops such as vegetables, grains, pistachios and cumin and taking charge of marketing them independently.

Explained: Real Estate Transaction Facilitators

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Law No. 12 of 2014 regulates the profession of transaction facilitators and petition writers. A transaction facilitator is a person authorised to handle professionally and complete transactions at public and non-public entities on behalf of their owners for a fee. This includes all real estate transactions, payment of fees at the financial departments in Syria’s governorates, documentation at the Cadastral Affairs Directorates, and tracking them in courts.

The bureaucracy of government bodies and institutions, along with legal complexities, often makes completing a simple official transaction at a public entity a time-consuming and complicated task should someone attempt it on their own. Therefore, through their experience and relationships with government employees, transaction facilitators have become vital to expediting transactions and overcoming legal obstacles or by bribing employees.

Since 2011, reliance on transaction facilitators has noticeably increased with the increase in the number of people wanted for security reasons and compulsory military service who fear approaching government bodies. The client base has expanded to include displaced and expatriate Syrians who have lost the ability to follow up on their official transactions at government bodies.

Law No. 12 regulated the terms of transaction facilitators’ work. It specified the conditions that must be met for a professional licence, imposing disciplinary and financial penalties on violators. Among the qualifications for the job, a transaction facilitator must be Syrian, over 18 years old, a high school graduated, without felonies, employed outside of the public sector, dedicated to the profession, and have a permanent office.

Notably, Law No. 12 considers the profession of transaction facilitation a craft supervised by the Ministry of Industry and the General Union of Craftsmen. To practise this profession, a facilitator must pass a conduct examination set by the Ministry of Industry, be a member of the Craft Association in their governorate, have a licence from the specialised Craft Association certified by the head of the Union of Craft Associations in their governorate, the General Union of Craftsmen and the Ministry of Industry.

The law granted the General Union of Craftsmen the authority to determine the fees charged by transaction facilitators. However, in practice, the union does not set these fees; instead, the facilitators autonomously determine their charges. Often, these fees include amounts and gifts given to employees as bribes to expedite the transaction or to find solutions and loopholes to circumvent the law.

A transaction facilitator takes an oath before the Magistrate’s Court to practise their profession with honour and integrity. However, university degree holders are exempt from this oath. The law also allows members of the “Craft Associations for Licensed Real Estate, Administrative and Surveying Activities” in the governorates to engage in transaction facilitation and petition writing.

Law No. 12 stipulates one to three months in prison and a SYP 25,000 fine for anyone working as a transaction facilitator without a licence. Patrols and judicial officers are deployed to Cadastral Affairs departments and government offices to ensure compliance with professional practice conditions and issue warnings or legal notices to those working without a licence.

Before Law No. 12 of 2014, Law No. 119 of 1951 regulated the profession of transaction facilitation and allowed its workers to form their union, which operated until it dissolved in 1969. A craft association for transaction facilitators was established in 1974 under the supervision of the Ministry of Industry. Generally, the provisions of Law No. 119 of 1951 remained in effect until the enactment of Law No. 12 of 2014.

State-run media often report complaints from licensed transaction facilitators about the increasing number of unlicensed individuals in the profession attracted by its good income. This situation creates competition that further relies on networks of corruption and favouritism within government bodies. Some facilitators note that poor internet connectivity and frequent power outages are obstacles to their work, in addition to bureaucracy and the whims of public sector employees. Some local media point out the existence of networks of employees who work exclusively with certain facilitators and deliberately delay transactions for others. Due to declining incomes and difficult living conditions, some lawyers have started working as unlicensed transaction facilitators in recent years.

Besides the high fees charged by transaction facilitators, their work is often marred by delays and procrastination, and they frequently fail to complete transactions within the agreed timeframe. In many transactions involving legal issues, a transaction facilitator may demand a hefty upfront fee, justifying it as necessary for bribing officials or facilitating security clearance in real estate sales. This places clients at the mercy of the facilitator, often without the ability to recover the fee in case of a dispute or the facilitator’s inability to complete the transaction. Some facilitators delay completing transactions to pressure clients for more money, claiming additional funds are needed to bribe officials.

Thousands of people work in transaction facilitation across areas under the Damascus government’s control. For instance, in Lattakia, there are 965 licensed facilitators affiliated with the Craft Association, and in Damascus, there are about 1,200 licensed facilitators, not to mention many unlicensed facilitators.

How are Land Registries in Opposition-Held Areas Responding to the Earthquake?

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The February 06 earthquake has made matters more difficult for authorities responsible for managing land registries in opposition-controlled areas of northwestern Syria. Nevertheless, these authorities have not issued any instructions or laws to address the quake’s impacts amid Syria’s lack of legislative framework addressing the properties affected by natural disasters or wars.

The earthquake damage only adds to property rights threats in opposition-controlled areas that have been subjected to bombing over the past few years and suffer from issues related to documenting property ownership, urban planning, and informal housing. As a result, the authorities responsible for managing property interests in these areas appear incapable of documenting and protecting property rights impacted by the quake.

In Syria, the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs is the official body responsible for documenting property ownership and emergency changes to properties. No document related to properties acquires definitive proof unless registered in these records. 

In opposition-controlled areas in northwestern Syria, there are many administrations of this kind, including the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in Idlib, part of the Hay’at-Tahrir Al-Sham-affiliated Syrian Salvation Government (SSG). Meanwhile, areas under the control of the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government (SIG) appear more fragmented, with each cadastral affairs department reporting to the local council of its city or town, e.g. the Cadastral Affairs Department in Azaz, the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in the city of Al-Bab, and the Land Registry in Afrin.

SSG-controlled areas

The Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in Idlib has not issued any post-earthquake instructions. A source within the directorate told The Syria Report that nobody asked them to do anything. They explained that the procedures followed by the directorate for collapsed properties are as follows: if a property is listed in the Land Registry and is subdivided and the building has been destroyed or demolished, the boundaries of the land on which the property was built can be accurately redefined based on the records. A detailed plan can also be provided for the building as it was before it was destroyed.

The directorate carries out this work at the request of property owners, especially if disputes arise. However, if the property in question is unauthorised, unregistered, and not subdivided within the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, it is registered as undeveloped land or land prepared for construction. Therefore, the directorate cannot do anything in the event of an earthquake or other disaster.

This situation is not new in Syria and applies to informal housing areas that have been extensively destroyed during the conflict or demolished by the regime. This has resulted in the loss of rights for the owners of these homes, which existed in reality but were not documented in the property records.

Sources told The Syria Report that the SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services dealt with the earthquake’s aftermath but that their approach focused solely on helping those affected. An informed source within the ministry said they did not issue any new decisions or instructions apart from setting up committees to assess the earthquake damage immediately after the fact.

The resource-limited ministry attempted to help those affected by the earthquake by directing humanitarian organisations operating in Idlib towards repairing damaged homes. The ministry coordinated with these organisations and provided them with information about the damaged buildings, their conditions, and needs, whether for demolition, reinforcement or repair. The earthquake damage assessment committees prepared the report. According to a source in one of the organisations, the ministry asked organisations to prioritise repairing the damaged buildings.

For example, Shafaq, a Syrian NGO registered in Turkey since 2013, received the ministry’s approval to work on repairing homes in the town of Maarat Misrin. The ministry provided the organisation with a list of 50 buildings damaged by the quake needing repair and asked them to continue coordinating with the local council in Maarrat Misrin regarding the buildings whose owners had not yet requested an inspection by the committees. The same applies to organisations working in Salqin, Armanaz and other areas under SSG control.

SIG-controlled areas

The situation in areas controlled by the SIG has been similar in regard to how cadastral affairs departments and directorates dealt with the quake aftermath. 

However, it is worth noting that one initiative in the Jandares area of rural Afrin aimed to preserve property rights. Jandares was the area most affected by the earthquake, resulting in the collapse and removal of many buildings and raising concerns about property rights. Therefore, the land registry in Azaz collaborated and met with the Next Day organisation, an NGO concerned with housing, land and property rights, to form a survey committee to determine the locations and boundaries of the destroyed buildings in Jandares, similar to delimitation and census work.

There is an ongoing crisis in addressing property issues in Afrin due to several main factors. Firstly, the property database before 2011 in Afrin exists only within Aleppo’s main cadastral affairs directorate. Second, many property documents left behind by the majority-Kurdish authorities’ land registry during their control of the area between 2012-2018 mostly related to unauthorised construction. Third, significant informal urban expansion has occurred recently, particularly after the opposition took control in 2021.

The Free Engineers Union, Ministry of Local Administration and Services and local councils have all dealt with the quake aftermath in SIG areas. Committees are formed in cooperation with these entities to inspect damaged buildings, assess their technical condition, and determine their needs. However, due to limited resources, local humanitarian organisations bore the burden of funding.

For example, on February 19, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Engineers Union and Mercy Without Borders, an NGO established in 2012 and registered in Turkey. They launched a comprehensive survey project for facilities and buildings to assess earthquake damage in affected areas in northern Syria. Under this memorandum, the organisation provided the necessary equipment and logistical services for the assessment process and secured wages for the assessment teams in Azaz and Afrin.

In Jandares, the Comprehensive Engineering Survey Project Management for Facilities and Buildings, the Public Safety Committee of the Free Syrian Engineers Union, the Presidency of the Local Council in Jandares city, and engineers from the local council Service Office agreed on the survey, evaluation and supervision of the debris removal from damaged buildings. This process then began in early March, following the survey results.

Also in March, the Ministry of Local Administration and Services formed the Central Committee for Damage Assessment and Surveying in coordination with the Free Engineers Union; the Support Coordination Unit; representatives of the Free Aleppo Governorate Council; local councils in Jandares, Afrin, Azaz, and Suoran; the Syrian Civil Defence, or White Helmets; the Stability Support Unit; the Free Aleppo Lawyers Union; and the Free Aleppo University. These groups decided to form subcommittees in areas affected by the earthquake under the supervision of the SIG to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the earthquake damage, submit proposals and implement them all while preserving housing, land, and property rights.

Behind the Announcement that Real Estate Documents are Restored

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In early 2022, the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs finished work to restore damaged real estate documents for some real estate zones in Arbeen, part of the Douma district in the Rural Damascus governorate. In that process to restore documents, some Administrative Restoration decisions were issued, in addition to one Judicial Restoration decision.

Law No. 23 of 2017, which regulates how to restore lost or damaged real estate documents, defines restoration as a set of administrative and judicial steps that end with issuing approved replacement documents or completing missing sections of existing documents. The law outlined two different methods for this process: administrative restoration and judicial restoration. Administrative restoration applies when there are sufficient documents available with the concerned Cadastral Affairs department to restore the lost or damaged document. But if those documents are fully damaged and there are no copies or other records available with the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs or other government entities, then judicial restoration is pursued. 

In a radio interview in September 2022, the General Director of Cadastral Affairs explained that if a given series of real estate transactions can be linked to documents available with the directorate without any missing information, then restoration can be done directly. Afterwards, administrative restoration of the damaged documents can be announced in the relevant area. But if some of these documents are missing, then the case is referred to the judiciary for the judicial restoration process. 

The Rural Damascus cadastral affairs director told the semi-official Al-Watan newspaper in September 2019 that, of 898 real estate records in Arbeen, 310 were missing. Consequently, the documents held by the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs and some government agencies have been relied upon, in order to implement the administrative restoration of those lost records.

This process makes sense, as the central office of the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in Damascus periodically makes copies of real estate documents in its sub-directorates in the governorates, in order to store them in the capital on microfilm and digital cameras, according to official statements. There is also a central warehouse in Damascus dedicated to storing these copies, as well as a set of microfilm copies kept at the Central Bank of Syria.  

To address issues about the strength and authenticity of certain documents, Law No. 33 of 2017 states that copies stored electronically or on microfilm have the same evidentiary value as the original documents. 

Original real estate documents are those mentioned in Article 1 of the Land Registry Law, issued as part of Decree No. 188 of 1926. Under the law, the Land Registry is a set of documents that shows the description and legal status of each real estate property, as well as any rights, amendments or transactions connected to that property. Those amendments and transactions must be recorded on the Land Record for the properties in question. The law also mandates that responsible parties record the date and time for their real estate transactions on these Records. 

It is unclear if microfilm and electronic copies of these Records show all the amendments and transactions, including sales, purchases, lawsuits and other notes. Also among the documents that comprise the Land Registry are a number of complementary records, which in turn include many pages. The ownership registry book is the main record entry. There is also the 200-page journal book, which lists the registration requests and transactions by date and type and assigns each a serial number. 

This lack of clarity — over whether microfilm and electronic copies contain full details of amendments and transactions — in turn impacts the reliability of the administrative restoration process, which relies on documents available at the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs. In other words, depending on this central archive in Damascus may not sufficiently provide information on all transactions. There is no certain answer over whether Land Registry officials have transferred all those transactions from the original journal book to the ownership registry book, whether there is an electronic or microfilm copy of the journal book or when the last record was added. This is on top of doubts surrounding the mechanisms for building, preserving and managing the central archive and to what extent it keeps up with the pace of real estate documentation. 

Law No. 33 of 2017 also stipulates that a website be set up for restoring real estate documents, with the goal of informing the public on the procedures for implementing the law. However, this website has yet to appear, despite the administrative and judicial restoration processes having been completed in more than one area — raising additional concerns for the housing, land and property rights of absent, detained, missing and forcibly displaced property owners in particular. 

Explained: How the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs Stores Documents

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In the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs (GDCA), the Central Land Registry Department and the Information Department are responsible for preserving and archiving various real estate documents to organise tasks and prepare for emergencies. Those documents include papers, photographs and electronic files. The aim is to protect the documents to prevent damage and loss of rights. 

The mechanisms in place for documentation and archiving ensure the preservation of real estate documents, even if paper files are damaged. Previously, the general directorate would periodically photograph and store real estate documents stored at various sub-directorates in the governorates using digital cameras and microfilm, according to an undated study called Syrian Real Estate Legislation: Prospects and Challenges. The current general director of the GDCA and the director of the real estate legalisation prepared the report. There are subsidiary storage facilities in the governorates and a central facility in Damascus dedicated to storing these copies. 

Another set of copies of the microfilm images is also stored at the Central Bank of Syria, according to a statement by the cadastral affairs general director in September 2022. 

If true, this means there is a vast archive of real estate documents in Syria’s governorates. 

However, the general directorate appears to have not fully lived up to its tasks. For example, a project that began in the 1990s to digitise the Land Registry, which was part of a larger strategic digital governance project, did not meet much success. 

Only around 11 percent of Land Records in Syria have so far been digitised, which includes transferring these records from paper documents into electronic files. In 2014, the then-director of cadastral affairs stated that the digitisation project had reached a stumbling block, despite having direct impacts on real estate rights and the exchange of individuals’ and the state’s fixed assets. This was due, he said, to a lack of realistic and systematic planning and a failure to develop new work tools or update outdated technical concepts. 

On the other hand, if the general directorate was fully meeting its duties, there would be no need, for example, to issue new laws such as Law No. 33 of 2017, which regulates the restoration of lost or damaged real estate documents. The law defines restoration as a set of administrative and judicial procedures ending in issuing an approved replacement for a real estate document or completing a missing or damaged portion.

There are two paths for document restoration under Law No. 33, administrative and judicial. Administrative restoration is when the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs or another government entity has sufficient documents to restore their lost ones. Judicial restoration is applied if pictures of copies of those documents are not available or if there are insufficient documents. In such cases, a judge appointed by the Minister of Justice issues a decision specifying the nature of the damaged land records and any other components needing restoration. The concerned parties then have six months to provide documents supporting the real estate rights recorded on those land records. 

If the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs had a complete backup copy of those real estate registries, as officials claim, then there would be no need for judicial restoration. Indeed, despite this claim, the directorate acknowledges that its central archive is incomplete or outdated and that it must restore certain documents. 

Explained: General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs

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From the 16th century until the end of Ottoman rule in Syria, the Sharia courts regulated the documentation for proving real estate ownership and entered them into their records. These records are still preserved in Damascus and Aleppo, and to a lesser degree in Homs and Hama, and are still used before the Sharia courts today.

The modern system of land registration and administration in Syria began with the issuance of the Ottoman Tabu land registry system in 1859, which remained in force until 1918. Meanwhile, the current real estate system, with its institutions and laws, began only with the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The French High Commissioner issued four decrees based on French, German and Swiss laws in order to reform the real estate system in Syria and Lebanon: 

Decree No. 186 of 1926, which included the system for real estate delimitation and census; Decree No. 187 of 1926, which identified the mechanisms for delimitation and census; Decree No. 188 of 1926, which included the Land Registry Law; and Decree No. 189 of 1926, which carried the executive instructions for the Land Registry Law.

This is how the modern Syrian state’s Land Registry came to be. Decree No. 188 of 1926 defined the Land Registry as a set of documents containing the descriptions and legal statuses of each piece of real estate, as well as the rights attached to them and any transactions or modifications. Under this decree, the registry consists of an ownership registry book and its supplementary documents, namely: daily book, a delimitation and census record, survey maps, aerial plans, survey plans and any other attached documents. 

For Syrians, the term “Land Registry” refers to the place where real estate transactions and other related items are documented. As for the official name of the institution, it is called the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs (GDCA), and is headquartered in Damascus with sub-departments in each governorate.

The legal and administrative structure of the GDCA has developed over time to meet changing documentation and registry needs. That said, the four decrees issued in 1926, during the French mandate, still exist today, alongside their amendments.

Legislative Decree  No. 81 of 1947 regulates the operations and staffing of the GDCA and stipulates opening central and subsidiary departments in the governorates. The GDCA was attached to the Ministry of Justice until 1959, when it was switched over to the Ministry of Agrarian Reform. Finally, Local Administration Law No. 7 of 2010 attached the GDCA to the Ministry of Local Administration. 

Originally, there were five central departments to the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs under Law No. 81: the Administrative Diwan, the Inspection Commission, the Land Registration Department, the Real Estate Survey and Improvement Department, and the Accounting Department. 

The number of departments increased over time, and their names and some of their duties changed, as the methods for preserving and archiving real estate documents developed from paper to photography, to digital. Today there are nine central departments: Real Estate Legalisation and Registration; Surveying; Administrative Affairs; Accounting; Central Land Registry; Information; Rehabilitation and Planning; Engineering and Transport; and Internal Monitoring. 

Explained: Online Real Estate Services

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The General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs opened the Central Specialised Citizens Real Estate Service Centre in April 2021, inside its headquarters in Damascus city. The directorate also announced that it will open similar centres in the other governorates to facilitate real estate service provisions to citizens. 

According to a video published by the state-owned news outlet SANA in August 2022, the Damascus centre includes: 18 service windows, two offices for an alphabetically-organised index and survey data, three collection offices, an informational office, a communications office, an office for supervising follow-up, a technical support office, a financial compliance office, and five Industrial Bank offices to allow direct payment of fees. 

The centre offers real estate services for the Damascus and Rural Damascus governorates. Those services include automated real estate registration, survey statements for automated real estate properties, proof or rejection of ownership, and a real estate registry statement that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can approve. For similar services in other governorates, the Damascus centre communicates electronically with relevant cadastral affairs directorates to obtain the abovementioned documents. In all cases, the services provided only extend to properties located within areas where registration has been automated. 

This work – albeit still modest – is the culmination of years of effort to automate certain processes in the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs as part of an e-government plan launched two decades ago alongside the UNDP. According to the program, 100 percent of Syria’s main government services should now be available electronically. However, for various reasons, including the past decade of war, little progress has been made toward that goal. 

The Syria Report asked several lawyers in Damascus who specialise in real estate how much they now benefit from online services at the centre. They all responded that they had never entered the centre despite working near-daily in the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs headquarters. Instead, they preferred to work traditionally, coordinating directly with Cadastral Affairs employees to obtain real estate documents for the clients in exchange for paying widely known bribes. It is customary for the attorney to bear these additional expenses. 

Citizen service centres

The General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs had previously begun providing online real estate services in coordination with the governorates’ citizen service centres. For example, the citizen service centres in Damascus governorate offered real estate services, including registering residential lease contracts, certified copies of lease contracts, and temporary registration. Temporary registration includes a statement showing the series of owners for a property, an ownership statement drawn from the alphabetical index, a real estate registry request, a real estate compliance registry and a certified copy of the title deed. The citizen service centres in Damascus also provide some real estate services to other governorates, such as real estate registry extraction, description statement, series of owners, survey statements, survey plans, subdivision plans and ownership statements from the alphabetical index. 

Automating work in Cadastral Affairs directorates

Providing these real estate services was impossible until a necessary infrastructure was set up, including automating land registries in some governorates: Damascus, Rural Damascus, Hama, Lattakia, Tartous and Suweida. Certain electronic equipment and software were also installed. The Cadastral Affairs directores in different governorates were also linked to the central directorate in Damascus and the service centres. 

Digitising, or automating, land registries means transferring paper real estate records into digital records and electronically linking real estate services between the governorates. The goal is to protect and facilitate information handling, speed up real estate transactions, and ease citizens’ access to Cadastral Affairs services. 

Recent years have seen several statements, reports and news items from the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs about automating its records. Now and then, it would announce that it was automating the records for new real estate zones containing thousands of properties. 

However, these achievements no longer appear realistic. What little has been achieved in recent years has been limited and inconsistent. For example, in 2017, the cadastral affairs directorate in Hama announced that it had finished installing an electronic real estate data exchange network – also known as a BDN – in the Masyaf, Salamiyeh, Mahardeh and Al-Suqaylabiyeh districts. At the same time, the directorate also announced that it was following up on a project to automate the land registry and that, as a first step, it had entered some 2,500 real estate properties in Hama. But the provision of electronic real estate services in Hama was delayed until February 2022. By that point, around 43,500 land records of a total 482,925 in Hama were digitised, or only about 10 percent. Completion rates in other governorates are around the same or even less. 

Still, in early 2018, the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs stated that it was following up on work to digitise records in Damascus, Rural Damascus, Tartous, Lattakia, Homs, Hama and Suweida, with a total of 25 real estate zones and two zoned areas in Damascus having undergone the process. This number is paltry compared with Syria’s total 11,172 real estate zones. And amid a lack of statistics and slow-moving work on the national level, it is difficult to obtain precise numbers on the success rate so far. The official numbers available so far indicate that until the beginning of 2021, some 500,000 land records across Syria have been digitised out of a total of around six million, or around eight percent, are now digitised. More recently, in October 2022, the Minister of Local Administration announced that around 700,000 records had been digitised, raising that rate to 11 percent. 

Cadastral Affairs has blamed these law numbers on numerous difficulties and obstacles, such as electricity shortages, fuel, staff at all employment levels and funding. For example, in 2018, only SYP 225 million were allocated to the directorate to follow up on the digitisation project. 

In short, any electronic real estate services are limited to the land records that have already been digitised, which means that such services are only available for around 11 percent of all such records in Syria so far. It is also unclear how continued electricity and internet outages will impact such services. 

Explained: Subdivision of Real Estate Properties

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Ifraz, or subdivision, of real estate in Syria means dividing a real estate property into smaller parcels. The Directorate of Cadastral Affairs carries out the technical process following plans that the relevant local administrative unit has approved. 

The subdivision process divides the original property into new properties, each with a unique number. It also considers the building code for the area if the original property was located within a zoning plan or the minimum surface area for agriculture if the property was originally agricultural land outside of a zoning plan. 

One reason an owner may decide to subdivide their property is to divide it into parts to sell. In other cases, common property owners may wish to allocate a piece to each of them. 

It is important to distinguish between the subdivision process and a similar process called real estate partitioning. The latter is a procedure where owners partition a piece of land into subplots to build buildings and public facilities on those subplots. The Planning and Urban Development Law No. 23 of 2015 delineates the methods and conditions for real estate division. 

 

How is ifraz carried out? 

Ifraz occurs through one of two methods. First, it can be done by mutual consent of the owners or through the order and permission of the property owner. Secondly, subdivision can also be carried out via court ruling after one or all common owners file a case for possession to divide the property amongst themselves. 

For the subdivision to be implemented, the survey department of the relevant Land Registry, a part of the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, must complete a technical subdivision draft for the property. This draft contains technical plans that determine what the property will look like after subdivision, the property description, and boundary lines. 

Additionally, this draft must comply with the building code in its real estate zone and the master and detailed zoning plans, according to the Ministry of Local Administration Circular No. 1/63/2/D of 2000.  

Next, the relevant administrative unit must approve the technical subdivision draft for properties within the local zoning plan, according to a Ministry of Local Administration circular from 2011, based on the Local Administration Law in Legislative Decree No. 107 of 2011. Meanwhile, the local technical services directorate approves drafts for properties outside the zoning plan. 

After that comes a series of different steps within the relevant land registry department: compiling a subdivision contract between the property owners that includes their approval of the technical subdivision draft; registration of that contract in the real estate documentation office; confirmation of the contract in the survey department; then entering into the registration division which creates new land records for the properties resulting from the subdivision process. 

Conditions for subdivision

The subdivision process may only be carried out for properties that have final ownership, meaning that for subdivision to occur, full ownership must already be in place, and there may not be any lawsuits in the land record for that property. 

Agricultural lands outside of zoning plans may not undergo subdivision if less than 4,000 square metres, per the Ministry of Agriculture Circular No. 1308/B of 1984. 

The older Municipalities Law No. 172 of 1956 stated that lands could not be subdivided, partitioned, or zoned into multiple building plots within the borders of a municipality without a draft first approved by the local mayor. This is mainly because, in some cases of termination of common property, the property’s subdivision can result in shares whose surface area is below the permissible limit for constructing any buildings. Such shares then remain unusable. This is why the Minister of Justice issued Communique No. 43 of 1962 to the courts, which affirmed that in cases of common property termination, subdivision drafts must be presented to mayors for approval to comply with building codes before a court rules on the subdivision. 

Meanwhile, in State Council jurisprudence No. 149 of 1963, Cadastral Affairs was obligated to register subdivisions issued by final court rulings, even if they violated building codes. If Cadastral Affairs files a claim objecting to the subdivision ruling, the case may be exempted from this judicial process per the Procedural Code. 

Explained: Expropriating Properties That Haven’t Undergone Delimitation and Census

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Article 10 of Expropriation Law No. 20 of 1983 allows for the expropriation of lands that have not undergone delimitation and census – that is, real estate with no Land Record. For this to occur, from the outset, only the lands included in the expropriation must undergo delimitation and census. However, the expropriating party may also take possession of a property before this process. 

The government delineated the delimitation and census process in Decree No. 186 of 1926, which concerns lands that still need to be included in the Land Registry. The process results in establishing a Land Record for real estate in a given area, assigning them property numbers, and submitting the owners’ names to Cadastral Affairs. 

Council of Ministers Communique, issued in 1982, defines the procedures for expropriating real estate in areas that have yet to undergo delimitation and census. The expropriating public entity must announce its expropriation decree via its main headquarters and in the public square of the village where the targeted land is located. This entity then must provide the relevant real estate department with a copy of the expropriation decree, alongside a request to launch delimitation and census work on the expropriated property. 

A real estate judge must sign the delimitation and census work decision to proceed with the job at hand, after which the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs and the expropriating entity are informed. 

The Land Registry directorate tasks a survey team of specialised engineers, legal advisers, and other employees to carry out delimitation and census. The Land Registry’s delimitation and census office opens a dedicated register for the targeted properties to record the entire process and submit the final plans and survey records to the Land Registry’s secretariat. 

The Directorate of State Properties, which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture, must also be represented as the survey team does its work so that it can provide any information or documents related to its rights and register any of its own objections. This right does not extend to the owner of the expropriated property. The Directorate of State Properties is in charge of inventorying, managing, and investing state-owned properties and opening and regulating registrations on that governorate’s real estate and public properties. The directorate also regulates the disposal, transfer of ownership, and registration of state-owned properties.  

Once the work of delimitation and census is complete, the dossiers for the expropriated properties are submitted to the delimitation and census office for technical and legal review. The office then notifies the real estate judge of any deficiencies that must be resolved. The dossiers include survey and location plans for the property and notes on delimitation and census, such as a description of the property, its location, legal type, boundaries, owners’ names, any objections to those boundaries, and any other documents and papers provided by various parties. 

The real estate judge announces when delimitation and census work has been completed, informs the relevant authorities, and sets a 10-day deadline for any objections. Only public entities may submit complaints, with owners and other rights holders excluded. In the eyes of the law, the property has become expropriated and is no longer privately owned. For objections to delimitation and census of properties that have not been expropriated, the deadline is 30 days.

Following the deadline for expropriated properties, the real estate judge announces their final decision and begins to read through the objections. 

Relevant authorities must be notified of the final decision, and a copy of the decision must be posted to the door of the Real Estate Court. It does not need to be published in the Official Gazette. Afterwards, the decision is approved and sent directly to the secretariat of Cadastral Affairs to undergo any necessary procedures. 

The owner of the expropriated property is excluded from these procedures. They also are not represented during this process even though the property has not yet been registered in the name of the expropriating entity. Though the owner should be allowed to intervene and present objections during delimitation and census, jurisprudence No. 325/326 of 1982 of the Supreme Administrative Court affirms that such owners are barred from this right. The court argues that this is because owners of exropriated properties have no relation to the delimitation and census process, which does not deprive them of their right to collect compensation on a set date. 

Furthermore, expropriation allowances are not handed over to the expropriated property owners until after the delimitation and census procedure is complete, according to State Council Opinion No. 14 of 1973. This process can take years, negatively impacting the owner by barring them from their right to object and delaying their compensation. 

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