Estonia, Financial Services, Real Estate

A couple of days ago the council of the northeastern industrial city Kohtla-Jarve decided to relinquish, in accordance with the Law of Property Act, immovable property ownership with respect to apartments in a poor state of repair which no one wishes to buy or rent.

"The law says that the owner of immovable property may relinquish ownership of the property in favor of the state and the state's agreement to it is not required. It was based on that provision that the city of Kohtla-Jarve took action, making a gift to us all in the form of 31 empty municipal apartments the cost of whose upkeep is more than 45,000 euros per year," Karis said.

The head of the National Audit Office added that if all municipalities that own empty apartments were to follow suit, the state would have to spend up to a million euros for the upkeep of such apartments every year.

The National Audit Office in 2016 conducted a survey of the situation of the real estate belonging to municipalities, including the individual apartments they own. It was established that at the end of 2015, municipalities owned 8,734 individual apartments, including 1,300 in Narva, 613 in Tallinn and 567 in Tartu.

The average size of the apartments was 47 square meters and 1,256 apartments or 14 percent of the total number had never been used in 2015. The number of unused apartments was biggest in the northeastern oil shale industry cities of Kivioli and Kohtla-Jarve - respectively 220 and 199.