MORTGAGE MARKET IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA: PRESENT SITUATION AND PROSPECTS HIPOTEKARNI TRG V REPUBLIKI SRBIJI: TRENUTNO STANJE IN OBETI Zagorka Gospavic, Jelena Gučevic, Olivera Vasovic, Vladan Djokic UDk: 332.6:528.4:(497.11) ABSTRACT This paper discusses the development of mortgage loans market in the Republic of Serbia through development of the instruments for provision of legal security of investments - both to creditors and to debtors. It explains the process ofestablishment of Real Estate Cadastre as a prerequisite for registration ofreal estate mortgages. Creation of the Central Mortgage Register is an additional service that provides transparency of the procedures and mortgage market development. The entire procedure has been illustrated by the statistical data on the increase of the number of registered mortgages, starting from 1998 through the end of 2011. The impact of the global economic crisis on the moderate decrease of the number of new mortgages in the Republic of Serbia is quite evident. Article classification according to COBISS: 1.04 IZVLEČEK Prispevek obravnava razvoj hipotekarnega trga posojil v Republiki Srbiji z razvojem instrumentov za zagotavljanje pravne varnosti naložb - tako za upnike kot za dolžnike. Obrazloži postopek ustanavljanja katastra nepremičnin, ki je predpogoj za registracijo hipotek na nepremičninah. Vzpostavitev centralnega hipotekarnega registra je dodatna storitev, ki zagotavlja preglednost postopkov in razvoja hipotekarnega trga. Celoten postopek je razviden iz statističnih podatkov o rasti števila registriranih hipotek, začenši z letom 1998 do konca leta 2011. Vpliv svetovne gospodarske krize na zmerno znižanje števila novih hipotek v Republiki Srbiji je dokaj očiten. KEY WORDS KLJUČNE BESEDE Real Estate Cadastre, mortgage loan, mortgage kataster nepremičnin, hipotekarni kredit, market, Central Mortgage Register, registration hipotekarni trg, centralni hipotekarni register, registracija 1 INTRODUCTION Historically observed, the establishment of mortgages, mortgage loans and the relevant market in the Republic of Serbia can be linked back to two important years in the distant history - 1830 when the Turkish Sultan first recognized Serbian autonomy in the form of „Sultan's edict" and 1836 when the head of the Serbian state at the time, Prince Milos Obrenovic, passed his decree which defined the minimum area of a household that could not be mortgaged. That was the base for establishment of Funds Administration in 1862, when the mortgage loans under the state guarantee were first instituted. After the World War I, the Funds Administration became the National Mortgage Bank of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, which after the World War II became „Investbanka". Investbanka ceased to exist in 2001 following a decree passed by the National Bank of Yugoslavia. LLI ^ O oc H Z P O z < z N N r > t r^ í $ S I c Ü In the recent history, several events took place that were relevant for the development of the mortgage market in Serbia: the establishment of the National Corporation for Insurance of Housing Loans in 2004 and the adoption of the Mortgage Law that came into force in 2006. The Mortgage Law defines the legal relations in case when a property is mortgaged in order to obtain a loan. The adoption of the Law helped promote the overall legal and economic climate in the country which led to the increase of domestic and international investments in all areas of economic and social life as well as the guaranteed legal security of creditors and debtors (Vasovic, Gospavic, Cirovic, 2012). 2 METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY Research of mortgage market means becoming familiar with the laws and regulations pertaining to the real estate registration system , the laws governing mortgages on real estate, as well as with mechanisms of creation and maintenance of a mortgages digital database , in respect to today's technical and technological revolution (Wallace et al., 2006; Enemark et al., 2005) In order to search and gather information about the mortgage market it is necessary to define a unique public central electronic database in which the data will be compiled from the real estate registers. At the state level, a competent authority is appointed for database management, responsible for the registration and enforcement supervision. In the process of creation of an electronic database, it is necessary to define the interest groups, users and data access. The search and data view application of the database, depending on the interest groups, should provide the following overviews: - Subject of the mortgage, - Search process, origin and type of mortgage, - Mortgage contract, - The rights and obligations of the real estate owner, - The rights and obligations of the creditor, - The right to settle the debt and - Termination of mortgage. Modern real estate register in the Republic of Serbia contains factual data about real estate, as well as information on the rights, encumbrances and restrictions on real estate, gathered in the unique database. 3 AREA OF STUDY Republic of Serbia covers the area of 8.8 million hectares, with Belgrade as the capital, 23 towns and 150 political municipalities. The entire territory of the Republic has 4.522 cadastre si "S I S | municipalities with 18.748.699 cadastre lots (parcels). The institution in charge of establishment maintenance and modernization of real estate databases, so called Real Estate Cadastre, is the Republic Geodetic Authority (RGA), with headquarters located in Belgrade. RGA provides services to economic institutions and citizens in the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia ^ f (Tesla, Popovic, 2011). 4 description of the systems In order to understand the present situation on the mortgage market in Serbia it is necessary to look into historic development of real estate registration , creation of a modern real estate cadastre and adoption of the laws and regulations that enabled development of a mortgage loans and registration of mortgages in a secured way. 4.1 Historical development of the real estate registers in the Republic of serbia Due to various social, political, economic and military factors, the Republic of Serbia, form historical point of view, has four systems of public real estate registers (Mihailovic et al., 2011): - Book of Deeds with In-tabulation Books, - Land Books, - Land Cadastre and - Real Estate Cadastre. Each of the above mentioned registers are regulated by relevant laws and by-laws listed under the Literature segment of this paper. During the 1990s of the past century, the former Yugoslav republics passed the regulations that replaced the laws passed in 1931. (Cetl et al., 2012). The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the economic crisis limited the implementation of the planned reforms. The issue of cadastre in Serbia is particularly complex due to uneven situation in the field. The Land Book and the Book of | Deeds were held separately from the Land Cadastre in special departments of Municipal Courts. | The Land Book contained the records on real rights, property ownership and encumbrances. The S I Land Cadastre was a public record maintained by the geodetic administrations in municipalities. § § The Land Cadastre contained physical information on real estates: position, form, surface area, S3 culture, class, cadastral income and user (Ferlan et al., 2011). Until the adoption of the Law on g Survey and Cadastre and the Registration of Property Rights passed in 1988, the following was § in use in the Republic of Serbia: I 1 - Land Cadastre was based on the data available from the state survey: j Land Book established for 1.287 cadastral municipalities or 28% of the total number, Book of Deeds existed in an insignificant number of municipalities in Serbia. Gaus-Krieger projection for 95% of cadastral municipalities (survey done in the periods | 1926-1930 and 1945-1950), I ■ Stereographic projection for 4% of cadastral municipalities (the end of 19th and the | ^ beginning of the 20th century) I 5 Zoldner projection for 1% of cadastral municipalities (the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century). | $ « I ^ ¥ -V I is Registration of changes on real estate in the Land Cadastre was on voluntary bases, which led | "§ to incoherencies with the data available in the Land Books. It was clear that unification was ^ to S needed and creation of the unified register on real estates and property rights in the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia. The legal base for the start of creation of the unified register was incepted with the passing of the Law on Survey and Cadastre and Registration of Real Rights in 1988. The main reasons for the change of the existing system and mode of real estate registers functioning were the following: - Factual situation with the existing real estate registers, - The fact that two thirds of cadastral municipalities were without any property records, - Inability to register property rights, - Inability to register a larger number of properties and business facilities due to unregistered buildings, - Inability to register mortgages and other encumbrances, - Registration of the same real estate with two government bodies and at two different places, - Data incoherency problems with the existing records, - Incomplete and outdated real estate data registered in Land Books, - Incomplete real estate data registered in Land Cadastre, - Inability of efficient distribution of real estate data to end users. The existence of separate property registers and records on property rights could not support and encourage the real estate market development, nor could they meet the growing demands of the clients. That is why an organized endeavour of establishing a Real Estate Cadastre was initiated, as a unified database putting together the information from Land Cadastre and Land Books. h The Law on State Survey and Cadastre (Official Bulletin of the Republic of Serbia nos. 72/09, | 18/10) guarantees that the property rights are acquired, transferred, limited and cease to exist with | the registration in the Real Estate Cadastre. When it comes to burdens and encumbrances, the 5 | Real Estate Cadastre contains: real encumbrances and limitations in real estate governing, real | and personal official encumbrances, right of long term lease, mortgages and other encumbrances Sa | in accordance with the Law. The Real Estate Cadastre is established in an organized manner H | by cadastral municipalities. The work on the establishment of the Real Estate Cadastre in the | Republic of Serbia is in its final stage. The final 30 cadastral municipalities are currently in the | process of establishment, while 6 cadastral municipalities are undergoing land consolidation | survey, meaning that in those municipalities both Land Cadastre and Land Book are still in | use as separate registers, as shown in Fig. 1. Excluding the territory of Kosovo & Metohija, the blue colour denotes the territory where Real Estate Cadastre has been implemented, which is a mandatory prerequisite for development of secure system of mortgage market development. 'S If 3 I ^ il H S TS I to 1 LLI ^ 0 oc H z H i? 48/94, 12/96 i 15/96, 34/01,25/02 i 101/05). | ^ sj j? Zakon o državnom premeru i katastru ("Sl. glasnik RS", br. 72/09 i 18/2010) 1 3 Zakon o hipoteci ("Sl. glasnik RS", br. 115/05). | o ^ to Zakon o izvršnom postupku ("Sl. glasnik RS", br. 125/04) N I S LLI ^ 0 oc H (A z H CD 0 z < z N N ^ Received for publication: 30 August 2012 | Received by: 9 February 2013 i | Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zagorka Gospavic I & University of Belgrade, The Faculty of Civil Engineering q ^ Department Of Geodesy And Geoinformatics, Bulevar kralja Aleksandra 73, 11 000, Belgrade | e-mail: zaga@grf.bg.ac.rs s Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jelena Gucevic University of Belgrade, The Faculty of Civil Engineering « fcs Department Of Geodesy And Geoinformatics, Bulevar kralja Aleksandra 73, 11 000, Belgrade e-mail: jgucevic@grf.bg.ac.rs iI I MSc in Land Management and Geodesy, Olivera Vasovic, s Belgrade University of Applied Sciences for Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Milana Rakica 42, 11 000, Belgrade e-mail: oliveravasovic@vggs.rs % su <0 jS | v Prof. Dr. Vladan Djokic o ^ University of Belgrade,The Faculty of Architecture, Bulevar kralja Aleksandra 73, 11 000, Belgrade to 3« e-mail: vdjokic@arh.bg.ac.rs