Going It Alone, and Frustrated

When I’m abroad I prefer to look for the places locals go rather than the tourist spots. The local neighborhood restaurant always beats, for me, a city-center restaurant cooking international food and serving generic dishes like pizza, pasta or burgers. It’s a way to learn about the local culture and the local people. The local soup doesn’t always suit the Israeli palate, and if you keep kosher, you’ll struggle to find anything to order in most neighborhood restaurants. Still, after a few visits to the same neighborhood place, when I asked them to make fish in foil on the grill for a client who had come with me, they said yes.

I met Assaf at just such a neighborhood restaurant, in a European capital I visit regularly. He was trying to explain the rules of kashrut to the local waiter, and I stepped in to help when I saw the waiter didn’t really understand what he was asking for.

We started talking in Hebrew. When Assaf realized I’m a lawyer, he began pouring out his frustration with the local bureaucracy. He had bought an apartment a few days earlier and couldn’t finish the required bureaucratic procedures. Every time he was asked for another document or a different one, and every day he wasted hours in queues at the municipality or the tax offices without anyone understanding what he wanted or needed, and without getting what he needed. Assaf had turned down the agent’s suggestion to be accompanied by a local lawyer through the process, and he certainly hadn’t consulted an Israeli lawyer before the deal.

“I don’t get it. Back home I went to the municipality and two hours later I walked out with a clearance for the land registry. I printed the purchase tax payment confirmation from the Tax Authority website, took that and the paperwork my lawyer gave me to the land registry, filed the file, and within 24 hours I got an email that the apartment was registered in my name,” he said.

“True,” I replied, “but Athens isn’t Modi’in, or Bucharest, or Porto. Every country and every city has its own way of doing bureaucracy, and if you don’t know it, don’t understand it, or don’t get help from someone who does, it’s frustrating.”

“If the locals can do it themselves, there’s no reason I can’t do it myself,” he said.

“And then you sit here frustrated, angry, and not understanding what isn’t working,” I replied. “Aren’t your working days worth money? For another few hundred euros, wouldn’t it have been worth saving the cost of living here and the lost income from your business or job back home?” I asked.

Every country has its own laws. Every country has its own requirements, and sometimes every local authority adds requirements of its own. If you don’t know what the requirements are or how to get the documents you need, you can waste precious time and a lot of money for nothing, and end up frustrated.

For example, in most European countries the property owner has to be registered as a taxpayer with the tax authority. To register as a taxpayer you need to fill in forms (usually in the local language), and sometimes there are extra requirements (in Romania you have to give the name and address of a local who will receive your mail; in Bulgaria your address in Israel is enough).

An Israeli lawyer who accompanies the buyer through the purchase (whatever the country) knows the requirements and the documents needed, and can presumably also obtain everything required, and do it more professionally and efficiently than the buyer could alone.

My recommendation: don’t buy or sell a property in a foreign country without professional guidance!!!