Does the President’s New Decree Resolve the Issue of Undocumented Houses?

Analysis

TNS Informasiya agentliyi

The issue of proper documentation of houses and lands, which has been a topic of discussion in Azerbaijan for years, has come back to the spotlight with a new decree signed by President Ilham Aliyev in July 2025. Official outlets present this decree as an almost “revolutionary change” and states that as a result of these developments, about 100,000 citizens may acquire ownership rights to real estate.

“Tribunat” , via examining the President's new decree, analyzed how effective the document could be in solving the current issue.

The Law “On the State Register of Real Estate” was adopted on June 29, 2004, and Article 8 of the Law lists the grounds for state registration of rights to real estate. One of the grounds is the documents determined by the relevant executive authority confirming the acquisition of rights to real estate objects acquired and established prior the entry into force of this Law.

The Presidential Decree of July 16, 2025 also aims to expand the list of legal documents for the registration of rights to real estate, in accordance with the grounds specified in Article 8 of the Law. The decree is claimed to increase the opportunities for citizens to obtain an extract from the register of ownership rights to real estate. The new documents added to the list are as follows:

1. Soviet-era documents are recognized as legal basis, in case:

• Decisions on residential and dachas (summer cottages – red.) issued by authorized bodies in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods (the period up to 2001);
• Orders of kolkhoz and sovkhoz heads;
• Extracts from the farm register;
• Information from real estate registers.

2. Some decisions issued by the executive authority are accepted as legal basis, in case:

• Decisions on land allocation issued before January 2001;
• Projects and orders on the demolition of a house and construction of a new one in its place (in case of consent of the executive authority and until 2004);

3. Lease agreements, orders on the provision of housing and agreements on the transfer of housing included in the state or public housing fund to private ownership, notarized agreements between local government bodies, ministries, state committees, central departments, enterprises, departments, organizations or relevant cooperative organizations, trade union organizations, other public organizations and the right holder.

The mentioned documents can only be recognized as legally binding documents if they exist in the National Archives Fund.

The new decree alters the current situation only in that it accepts some documents from the Soviet era and issued before 2001 as legal basis and allows individuals based on these documents to obtain an extract from the state registry. Even though it generates conditions for the formalization of property rights for many citizens, it does not resolve the legal status of the real estate of individuals who do not have any documents or whose documents are not in the archives fund.

According to Article 146 of the Civil Code, the right of ownership over real estate arises only as a result of state registration of confirming documents. Via the current legislation, the fact that a person actually lives in real estate for a long period is not enough for the right of ownership to arise. Simultaneously, Article 180.2 of the Civil Code establishes that an individual does not become the owner of real estate built on his own. Thus, if the real estate was built on state or other individual’s land, without official permission or in serious violation of urban planning and construction norms and rules, the right of ownership does not appear.

Consequently, once again, actual use itself does not result in property rights, and the decree does not fill the gap in this matter. Resultantly, the legalization of undocumented and illegally built houses is viable only on the condition of the existence and registration of certain documents, while actual use does not establish legal assurance.

However, the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Articles 13 and 29) and the European Convention on Human Rights (Protocol No. 1, Article 1), to which the State is a Party, provide for the recognition and protection of property rights.

According to the approach of the European Court of Human Rights, even though States have a wide margin of appreciation in the field of urban development and planning, it does not eliminate their obligations in relation to illegal buildings. If the State has accepted the existence of these buildings for many years and has not interfered in any way, the citizen’s actual interest in this real estate should already be protected from a legal perspective. In such cases, the Court recognizes the citizen’s material interest in the house as property. This approach sets an important precedent in terms of the fact that actual use can have legal consequences (Öneryıldız v. Turkey, §§ 128-129). Nevertheless, domestic legislation, including the new presidential decree, has not applied this approach and has not implemented measures aimed at effectively solving the problem.

Back in March 2011, at a meeting held at the Baku City Executive Power, President Ilham Aliyev gave the government a special assignment to document houses built without official permission. Four years later, a Decree dated January 13, 2015, established a list of documents confirming the acquisition of rights over real estate objects acquired and created before the entry into force of the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan “On the State Register of Real Estate”. The latest amendments also provide for an increase in the number of documents on that list.

Government officials put forward that approximately 100 thousand citizens may acquire property rights with this decree. However, this figure is indicated as a potential maximum. In practice, the condition that rights under legal documents can be subject to state registration only if there is a basis for these documents in the National Archive Fund (Part 7) may have a serious negative impact on the effectiveness of these amendments. Hence, in a number of cases, decisions and orders on the allocation of land plots to citizens are either not transferred to the archives or are not preserved there. On this basis, there are very frequent cases when territorial departments of the State Cadaster and Register of Real Estate, a public legal entity, refuse to register property rights.

However, establishment and recognition of property rights conditional on the presence of documents in the National Archive Fund contradicts the principle of protecting the right of individuals or legal entities to be convinced at administrative bodies (Article 13 of the Law “On Administrative Proceedings”). When a citizen obtains a legal document, he trusts and accepts it as a legal document without questioning. Later, the refusal to recognize property rights due to the lack of a basis for that document in the archive undermines his conviction in administrative bodies, and the problems associated with the recognition of property rights remain as they are.

“Tribunat” concludes that the problem is complex and cannot be solved by decrees alone. The new presidential decree, due to its similar nature to previous decrees and amendments, is not a sufficiently effective tool in solving the issue of undocumented real estate. The legitimization of documents that were previously not accepted as a legal basis increases the hope of obtaining an extract from the registry for many citizens. However, this document comes useful for only a tiny part of the problem. The fate of illegal buildings, houses built on land plots used by economic entities for the development of oil and gas fields in the protection zones of main pipelines, high-voltage power grids, transport infrastructure facilities and water is still opaque. This process cannot become widespread without resolving the problem of access to archives and the lack of documents.

In conclusion, although the decree promises transformations, a radical solution to the problem is not feasible without a “developed legal infrastructure” and “rule-governed urban planning”