My Israeli apartment is not in the Tabu, it is registered with a housing company. Can I still sell or mortgage it?

You can sell it and you can mortgage it, and thousands of Israeli apartments trade this way every year. What you cannot do is order a Land Registry extract, because the building has not yet been registered as a condominium and the register of who owns what is held privately by a chevra meshakenet, a housing company. That role is filled by the developer's law firm, or by a public housing company such as Amidar, Amigur or Rassco on older stock. The document that replaces the Land Registry extract is the ishur zchuyot, a confirmation of rights, and Israeli conveyancing practice treats it as authoritative evidence of who holds the rights and what encumbrances sit on them.

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Detailed Answer

The legal framework explains the workaround. Section 7 of the Land Law 1969 provides that a transaction in land is completed by registration, so where registration is not yet possible the buyer holds a contractual right against the seller and against the company holding the register. That distinction has consequences. A caveat under Sections 126 and 127 of the Land Law can be entered only against registered land, so the substitutes are a warning note recorded in the housing company's own books, a filing at the Registrar of Pledges under the Pledges Law 1967 where a bank is lending, and an irrevocable power of attorney held by the buyer's lawyer. A mortgage bank will lend against these rights but issues its security as an undertaking to register a mortgage once the building reaches the Land Registry, and some banks price that slightly differently or ask for extra documentation. Meanwhile the property is fully taxable in the ordinary way, and the eventual condominium registration order under Chapter Six of the Land Law converts everyone's contractual rights into registered title, sometimes decades after the building was occupied. The practical protections available to a buyer, including where a caveat can and cannot be used, are set out in our note on registering a caveat when buying Israeli property.

For an owner living abroad the friction is procedural rather than legal. The housing company will not release a confirmation of rights to an email address it does not recognise, and it will usually demand a signed request with identification, which for a non-resident means notarisation and often an apostille, adding a week or two before the file even opens. Every transfer needs the company's active cooperation: it must confirm the seller's rights, register the buyer, and issue clean confirmations to the buyer's bank, and unlike the Land Registry it has no statutory service standard, so a company that takes six weeks takes six weeks. Diligence is also thinner, because there is no public register to search. A careful Israeli lawyer will not stop at the confirmation of rights but will also search the Registrar of Pledges, the Execution Office and the Companies Registrar where a company is involved, precisely because a fraudulent or double sale is harder to detect without a public title record. Owners who have not visited Israel in years should also confirm that the company still holds a correct address, since notices about condominium registration and building committee matters go to whatever address it has on file.

In Practice: Section 7 of the Land Law 1969 means that until the condominium registration order is issued your rights are contractual, and the housing company's confirmation of rights is the operative document at every stage of a sale. A confirmation of rights typically costs NIS 100 to NIS 350 and takes 2 to 8 weeks to obtain from a company dealing with an owner abroad, against 5 minutes and NIS 15 for a Land Registry extract on a registered property. Buyers should expect their lawyer to file at the Registrar of Pledges under the Pledges Law 1967 the same week the deposit is paid, and to treat any refusal by the company to confirm the seller's rights in writing as a reason to stop the transaction rather than a formality to chase.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• You are buying, and the seller offers a confirmation of rights that is more than a few weeks old or that shows encumbrances nobody has explained. This is the one document standing between you and a defective purchase.
• You inherited the apartment and the housing company is refusing to register the heirs, which happens where the succession order has not been translated, apostilled or accompanied by a power of attorney the company accepts.
• The building is about to be registered as a condominium, because the allocation of shared areas, parking and storage is fixed at that moment and an owner abroad who does not respond loses the chance to object.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

An Israeli lawyer can obtain the confirmation of rights, run the searches that a housing company file does not cover, and register your rights properly whether the building is still with the company or already moving into the Land Registry.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.