Aleksey Lebedev: "Cadastral Service Market in Need for Increased Regulation"

At the beginning of 2017, Aleksey Lebedev headed the Board of the Professional Center of Cadastral Engineers Association (ProfCKI) and took up such major challenges as development of self-regulation in the cadastral activities field, protection of interests of cadastral engineers, and participation in law-making activities.

Following the letter of the law, Mr. Lebedev abnegated his powers as Director General of OAO Regional Surveying and Cadaster Office (RUGK). His aim is to conduct public activities not only to promote the Self-Regulated Organization Association, but also to protect rights and professional interests of cadastral engineers in general.
Latest changes in the legislation show that state regulation of cadastral services has increased, including through interaction with the National Association of Cadastral Engineers and self-regulated organizations (SRO). According to Mr. Lebedev, proper market development is impossible without such changes. The current practice shows steadily growing demand for cadastral services. Today, there are about 40 thousands registered cadastral engineers in Russia. A lot of new companies providing specialized services are emerging on the market, but many of them render cadastral services of insufficient quality.  Many cadastral engineers are not permitted to work following the results of their qualification examination. The present situation places high demands on performance of cadastral engineers. However, they regularly breach the current legislation and make errors in accounting and registration, which imposes additional load on state authorities. The goal is to develop regulation mechanisms to improve the quality of work and streamline the activities of cadastral specialists.

– In your opinion, which recent legislative innovations have influenced the cadastral market the most?
– Law No. 218-FZ “On State Registration of Real Estate” and law No. 221-FZ “On State Cadaster of Real Estate”, which came into force at the beginning of this year. Law 218-FZ defines essential concepts related to cadaster activities and accounting and registration procedures, as well as requirements and procedures for execution of cadastral accounting and title registration documents, terms and grounds for registration suspension/refusal, rules for object recording in the Unified State Register of Taxpayers, rules for information exchange between cadastral engineers and a registration body, and rules for inter-institutional information exchange. Law 221-FZ governs the relationship arising from cadastral activities between cadastral engineers, SROs and the National Association of Cadastral Engineer SROs, as well as state supervision and regulation rules.
Changes in the legislation have led to adoption of numerous by-laws, regulatory documents, etc. In November and December 2016 alone, there were over a hundred documents issued. Of course, times were tough for cadastral engineers in that transitional period: besides their main activities, they had to learn fast about changes in the legislation. Federal bodies, namely, Cadastral Chamber and Rosreestr, had increased work load, too. I should mention that, to this day, not all the services function as suggested by the legislation.

– What are the main benefits of new developments for you personally and for the market? What difficulties exist?
– The main benefit is that Law 218-FZ combines scopes of two laws previously existing independently. As a result we now have optimized procedures, shortened times for cadastral accounting and registration of title, and subsequently, lower expenses. Another great benefit is that the State Registrar of Title is now responsible for ungrounded delay in cadastral accounting and registration of title, ungrounded refusals, and avoidance of accounting and registration activities. In addition, the law took into account long-standing but "hung up" matters. Thus, for example, on January 1, 2017, in accordance with the latest change in the Civil Code and Law 218-FZ, it became possible to register title to a vehicle space.
Speaking of difficulties, I would like to note that regulations in our field, unfortunately, change very often, and these changes are inevitably accompanied by certain inertia of market players to follow the new rules. This causes a lot of errors and increases load on accounting and registration organizations. We can see this inertia even in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region where cadastral engineers have traditionally had very high qualifications. One of the unsolved problems is that at the moment it is not possible to fully implement all the procedures provided for in the new legislation. Foe example, not all the E-services are functioning as planned.  As to registration of title to a vehicle space, there are currently no approved XML forms in place, nor defined procedures for submitting documents. Now we hold working meetings on these issues.

– How will the latest legislative innovations influence relations between the Regional Surveying and Cadaster Office and property developers?
– Once again, I am not Director General of RGUK anymore, but in the last 4 years that I headed the company we created a solid ground for its continuous development. We developed a methodology, perfected procedures for inter-departmental communication and built a team of professionals. Thanks to all this, we entered into cooperation with major property developers and showed them that we were able to implement large-scale projects of any complexity. The work of the whole team made the company a market leader. I am certain that they will continue to succeed without me. On my part, I think I have to focus on public activities including promotion of self-regulation in the cadastral activity filed. RGUK's reputation, professionalism and experience in projects of any complexity will define their further development, while legislative changes are objective external factors everyone has to deal with.

– What are the differences between your SRO and other SROs in the cadastral field?
– The Professional Center of Cadastral Engineers SRO Association is among the newest and fastest developing self-regulated organizations. It was registered only in spring 2016, and already in August it had the required number of members (over 700) to be registered in the state SRO register. Today, this number is continuously growing. Among the association members there are lots of cadastral engineers representing specialist legal entities with vast experience in the accounting and registration field and a solid methodological basis. They also take part in legislative activities, jointly with SROs. Suffice it to mention such organizations as MOBTI State Unitary Enterprise, GUION State Unitary Enterprise, Meridian Group, RUGK, Gazprom Gazoraspredeleniye Leningrad Region, Proekneftegaz, Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost and others. SRO members include a lot of qualified private cadastral engineers. Without regard to the employment of cadastral engineers, our goal is to help them conduct their activities and learn application of law, and to protect their interests.
It should be noted that ProfCKI SRO Association was formed through a merger of several self-regulated organizations, including ASKI SRO that I presided over. In the 3 years of ASKI SRO work, we held numerous events for cadastral engineers aimed to train them, to develop cadastral activities and to protect them in case of disputes related to deprivation of qualification. I shall note that in 100% of such cases we successfully protected the rights of our engineers.

Information

Aleksey Lebedev worked in executive positions in the construction, project management and telecommunication fields from 1997 to 2010. In 2010–2013, he was the first deputy director general at GUION State Unitary Enterprise. He helped organize electronic transfer of archive data on real estate objects to the subdivision of Rosreestr Federal Service in St. Petersburg to enter this data in the State Real Estate Cadaster.
From 2012 to 2017, Aleksey Lebedev headed the Regional Surveying and Cadaster Office. During the 4 years, the company registered about 20 million square meters of capital structures, over 4000 objects (including capital structures and land plots) and over 900 apartment buildings.
Starting from 2017, Aleksey Lebedev became Chairman of ProfCKI SRO Association.  He is a member of Presidium of the National Chamber of Cadastral Engineers Association, and a member of Board at the Union of Leningrad Region Construction Organizations.