Svoj na Svome: Serbia Issues 368,578 Property Certificates
Minister Aleksandra Sofronijevic told parliament the count grew by about 33,000 in four days and explained why the law is being amended after barely six months in force.
Serbia’s Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Aleksandra Sofronijevic told the National Assembly on the evening of August 28 that 368,578 certificates have been issued so far under the Svoj na Svome (Own Home) law, while another 97,865 cases are still being processed. The figure is new, delivered just four days after her previous update, and it runs roughly 33,000 certificates ahead of the number she gave on August 24.
On that earlier date, according to a Tanjug report, Sofronijevic spoke of 334,992 certificates issued. Her own quote put the number of cases still in processing at 93,708, while Tanjug’s headline on the same report cited 97,708. The two figures diverge on that point, and the new number from August 28, 97,865 pending cases, sits closer to the headline figure than to the one in the quote.
On August 24, the minister also said that around 260,000 citizens had by then been registered in Serbia’s real estate cadastre. That figure referred to the number of people, not buildings, and she flagged it at the time as outdated, saying she did not “have fresh data on that.” At a session of the Committee on Spatial Planning, Transport, Infrastructure and Telecommunications held the same day, Sofronijevic said that in under six months of the law’s application, 333,870 cases had been resolved and more than 250,000 citizens and legal entities registered in the property cadastre. Of what was registered, family homes accounted for 50.35 percent and auxiliary structures for 49.36 percent.
What changes in the law
Amendments to the Law on Special Conditions for Recording and Registering Rights to Real Estate are one of 59 items lawmakers are voting on Monday. The committee adopted them in principle on August 24, alongside changes to the Law on Planning and Construction and a law on cutting the cost of installing large-capacity electronic communications networks.
In the debate, the minister explained that the amendments do not touch the substance of the law.
“The amendments we are proposing today, which I hope will be adopted because they serve the good of all our citizens, do not change the substance of the law, only the path we will take to get there. In the parliamentary debate that preceded the adoption of this law, I said we would monitor its implementation and, if we noticed any technical or other errors, that we would act,” Sofronijevic said in parliament.
The core of the proposed change is widening the pool of professionals allowed to draw up surveys of unregistered parts of buildings. Until now that work belonged exclusively to licensed surveyors; under the new rule, civil engineers and architects will be able to do it too. The minister specified that geodetic survey reports remain solely within the jurisdiction of licensed surveying engineers.
At the August 24 committee session, Sofronijevic also rejected claims that the law favors “tycoons and people close to the SNS,” arguing that its purpose was to permanently resolve the housing status of citizens who had built homes for their own needs.
A broader set of amendments
The amendments to the Law on Planning and Construction, according to the explanation given at the committee session, clarify the definitions of building adaptation, brownfield sites, gross developed floor area, wind farms and ski lifts, and spell out more clearly the role of the chief national urban planner and the urban planners of the autonomous provinces in overseeing planning documents.
Serbian News has previously reported that the Republic Geodetic Authority launched a Partnership for Citizens for the cadastre, a program that, like the Svoj na Svome law, relies on speeding up property registration. Parliament will vote Monday, alongside 58 other agenda items, on whether the proposed amendments take effect.
