Buying property by power of attorney in Georgia: POA, apostille, notary, payment

Buying property by power of attorney in Georgia: how it works

Buying property by power of attorney in Georgia lets you complete the whole deal without coming over: you choose the apartment from a video and a check report, sign a power of attorney before a notary in your country, and a representative signs the agreement on your behalf. You transfer the money from your own account directly to the seller and receive the extract showing your ownership after registration. The key to such a deal is the power of attorney: if it lacks a single right, the deal has to be postponed. So we write its text for the specific apartment and agree it with a Georgian notary before you go to a notary at home.

The deal step by step

• you choose the apartment from video, photos and an engineer's report;
• the lawyer checks the documents and prepares the preliminary agreement;
• we send you the text of the power of attorney agreed with a Georgian notary;
• you sign the power of attorney before a notary in your country and have it apostilled;
• you send the original power of attorney to Batumi by courier;
• the power of attorney is translated into Georgian and the translation certified;
• the representative signs the agreement before a Georgian notary;
• you transfer payment according to the scheme in the agreement, we file for registration and send you the extract.

How the apartment is checked before the deal is on the property document check page.

What the power of attorney must contain

A power of attorney issued abroad is apostilled if your country is a party to the Hague Convention, or legalised through a consulate. Since 20 October 2023, a transaction under such a power of attorney is registered only in notarial form, so the agreement is signed before a Georgian notary; more on the notary in Batumi page.

Who can be the representative

The representative can be someone you trust: a relative, a friend, a lawyer. We offer our own staff member or the partner lawyer, who works under an agreement with you and reports on every step. We do not pass money through the representative: you transfer payment yourself from your account to the seller's account, and the representative only signs documents and takes over the apartment. After each step you receive photos of the documents and a short report, and you can join the deal by video call.

Risks and how to close them off

The main risk of a deal by power of attorney is that the representative could do more than you intended. So we limit the power of attorney to a specific apartment, price and period, and leave out the right to receive your money. The second risk is technical: a typo in the name, passport number or cadastral code that makes the notary reject the document. We write the name in the power of attorney exactly as in the passport, in Latin letters and the same transliteration. We check the text with a Georgian notary before you sign it.

Timescales

The longest part of a deal by power of attorney is the power of attorney itself. Signing it before a notary, getting the apostille and sending the original by courier takes one to three weeks, depending on the country. The translation in Georgia takes a day or two. So we set the deadline for the main deal in the preliminary agreement with a margin; more on the preliminary agreement page. If the seller is not prepared to wait, we discuss a small deposit with clear refund terms.

Selling by power of attorney

You can also sell an apartment this way if you live abroad. Then what matters in the power of attorney is which account the buyer's money goes to: we advise naming your own account, not the representative's. We hand the keys to the buyer against a certificate only once payment has arrived. If you have owned the apartment for less than two years, we calculate the tax on the sale in advance, before you agree to the price. How selling works is in the sell property section.

How much a power of attorney transaction costs

A representative under power of attorney at the deal, with signing, filing with the registry and handover of the keys, costs from 720 ₾. Arranging the power of attorney, apostille and translations from 390 ₾, a legal due diligence check of the apartment from 960 ₾, a technical inspection of the apartment by an engineer from 480 ₾, full legal support for the transaction from 2 220 ₾. Notary, translation and registry fees are paid separately. The final cost is set after reviewing the transaction and agreeing the scope of work.