I bought a new apartment in Israel years ago and it is still not registered in my name. Is that normal?

Six years after handover, the buyer asks his Israeli lawyer for a nesach tabu to send to a bank abroad and is told there is nothing to send. The parcel is still registered to the developer, or to a company that no longer trades, and his name appears only on a caveat. He has paid in full. He has the keys. He is not, in the register's eyes, the owner.

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Detailed Answer

Section 6B of the Sale (Apartments) Law 5733-1973, added in 2011 precisely because this had become endemic, imposes three duties on a seller. Do everything required of you for the registration of the parcellation and unification of the land at the earliest possible date. Cause the building to be registered as a condominium no later than one year from the later of that registration or the delivery of the apartment to the buyer. Cause the buyer's rights to be registered in the condominium register no later than six months from the later of the condominium registration or delivery. Those are statutory deadlines, not aspirations, and breach founds a civil claim for the loss it causes. The reason they are so widely missed is that the first step depends on the planning authorities rather than the developer: parcellation of a block cannot be registered until plans, roads and public areas are settled, and that machinery routinely runs for years in a large project. Until it completes, your protection is a הערת אזהרה (hearat azhara), a caveat noted against the parcel under the Land Law 1969 that warns the world of your contractual right and blocks a competing dealing. Anyone who bought without one should treat that as the emergency rather than the registration delay.

The consequences land hardest on an owner abroad. A flat that exists only as a contractual right is sold by assignment of rights with the developer's written consent, not by a transfer at the Land Registry, and developers charge for that consent, commonly a few thousand shekels plus VAT at 18%. Israeli banks lend against registered title or a developer's undertaking, so mortgage options narrow. On death, the heirs cannot simply present a succession order to the Land Registry, because there is no entry to change: they present it to the developer or the housing company holding the register of rights, an exercise that turns on whether that company still exists and still has the file. This is the same structural problem as an apartment held through a housing company, which we cover in our answer on apartments registered with a housing company rather than in the Land Registry. What can be done from abroad is more than most owners try. Written demands citing Section 6B, addressed to the seller with a copy to its lawyers, tend to produce a schedule where phone calls produce nothing. Where the building itself can be registered as a condominium and the developer will not act, the Supervisor of Land Registration has jurisdiction to order it. And where the delay has cost money, in a lost sale or a refused mortgage, that loss is recoverable.

In Practice: Section 6B of the Sale (Apartments) Law 5733-1973 sets the deadlines: condominium registration within one year, buyer registration within six months thereafter, each measured from the later of parcellation or possession. A hearat azhara under the Land Law 1969 is what stands between you and a competing dealing in the meantime, and an extract confirming it is on the parcel costs about NIS 15 online from the Land Registry and Settlement of Rights Authority. In practice, full registration in a large Israeli project runs three to eight years from occupancy, and a sale by assignment of rights in the interim attracts a developer consent fee commonly in the range of NIS 3,000 to NIS 10,000 plus VAT.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• No caveat was registered when you bought. That is the one situation where the delay is genuinely dangerous, because your rights depend entirely on a contract nobody else can see.
• The developer has been liquidated or dissolved. Somebody still has to sign, and reconstructing the chain of rights to the point where a registrar will accept it is a project rather than a letter.
• You intend to sell or to mortgage within the next year. The assignment route needs the developer's cooperation and its price, and both are far easier to secure before you have a buyer waiting than after.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We check what is actually recorded against the parcel, put the Section 6B demand to the seller in a form that gets a timetable, and handle the assignment or the application to the Supervisor where registration has stalled for good.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.