The Legal Nature of an Apartment Sale Transaction
The sale of an apartment in Georgia takes the form of a contract of sale regulated by the Civil Code. Under Article 477, by the contract of sale the seller is obliged to transfer to the buyer the right of ownership in the property, to hand over the documents connected with it and to deliver the goods. The buyer, in turn, is obliged to pay the seller the agreed price and to accept the purchased property. This is a bilateral transaction: the right of each party is secured by the obligation of the other, and that is precisely why the accuracy of the contract text is decisive.
In the context of an apartment, this means that the transaction must clearly define the specific apartment being transferred, the seller's obligation to transfer ownership of it together with the related documents, and the buyer's obligation to pay the agreed price. If the price is not directly indicated in the contract, the parties may agree on the means of its determination — although in practice a precise and direct fixation of the price in the document is always the safer solution, because it removes any ground for later disagreement.
The Costs of Execution, Registration and Documents
Article 479 of the Civil Code establishes the default rule on the costs of selling an immovable — a land plot or any other immovable, an apartment included: the seller bears the costs of executing the contract of sale, of registration in the public registry and of submitting the documents necessary for it, unless otherwise provided by the contract on the basis of the parties' agreement.
This norm is dispositive: the parties may agree on a different allocation of costs, but if no such agreement exists, it is the seller who carries the costs connected with execution and registration. Before signing, it is therefore important for the parties to settle this question explicitly and record it in the document — otherwise the statutory rule applies automatically, and a misunderstanding discovered later can turn into a dispute.
Selling an Apartment with a Defect: The Seller's Obligations
If the sold item has a defect, then under Article 490 of the Civil Code the seller must either cure the defect or, where the matter concerns a generic item, replace the item within the period necessary for that purpose. In the context of an apartment sale the notion of a defect is broad: it can cover defects that the object has at the moment of the transaction, and the statutory obligation of the seller arises regardless of how the defect is labelled in everyday speech.
The seller is also obliged to reimburse the expenses necessary for curing the defect, including the costs of transportation, road, performance of work and materials. The same article allows the seller to refuse both the cure of the defect and the replacement of the item only where this requires disproportionately large expenses. And where the seller, for the purpose of curing the defect, hands over to the buyer an item free of defects, the seller may demand from the buyer the return of the defective item.