For the past couple of months, the real estate market has been in an uproar: everyone is afraid of demonic granny-owners who seize apartments through the courts from unsuspecting buyers. In this comprehensive guide, we will break down all aspects of this problem with a professional litigation lawyer: from chilling court stories to the most reliable ways to protect yourself from such risks. In short, it's going to be fun!
I'm a financier myself and try to stay away from courts, so I asked litigation lawyer Alexander Malyutin (author of the excellent blog 'Read in the Law,' which is dedicated to challenging transactions in court) to help me understand the legal side of the issue. In short, all the expertise in the massive article below comes from Alexander – a huge thank you to him for spending many hours answering my questions and compiling selections of court cases!
And I tried to make sure that everything written below is in simple and understandable human language – and that you don't get bored while reading. With the second task, the wonderful artist Vasya Lozhkin will also be helping me – I think his paintings perfectly convey the absurdly macabre spirit of the topic under discussion.
Disclaimer: In this article, to make it easier to understand, many legal terms and concepts have been significantly simplified, and it does not constitute legal and/or investment advice. Before trying anything from this material at home, we strongly recommend consulting with lawyers!
In addition to the text version, we have also released this material in video format:
TLDR: The main points in brief
Court documents with details have finally appeared in the Larisa Dolina case – and honestly, it's completely insane (the faint of heart should not read).
Dolina's case is not unique: every year, about 3,000 lawsuits challenging real estate transactions are filed in court (that's about 0.15% of all secondary market transactions) – 77% of them are granted by the court. UPD: As I write here, a more detailed search of court records found only 350 similar cases over the three years 2023–2025, and the grandmothers lost slightly more than half of them.
We have analyzed ten typical cases based on public court records – there are cases where the apartment was taken away, and cases where everything ended well for the buyers.
It is important to understand the legal reasoning the court uses in such cases. The reason for seizing an apartment can be restitution resulting from your specific transaction being declared invalid (if the seller was deceived, mistaken, or completely incapable of understanding what was happening), or vindication based on an even earlier transaction (in which you were not involved at all).
In all the cases mentioned above, the court doesn't care about your good faith as a buyer – that won't stop it from taking your apartment! However, in the case of vindication, good faith can help you get compensation from the state, and if you have a title insurance policy, from the insurance company as well.
It's best not to let it go to court and to avoid such a situation altogether – for this, we have compiled a list of red flags. If the seller in your transaction is an elderly woman who urgently wants to sell her apartment cheaply for cash, but doesn't want to communicate with you personally and can't clearly explain the reasons for the sale – run!
In case your transaction does end up in court, we have prepared a list of things you can prepare in advance to increase your chances of winning. In short: save as much written evidence as possible of the agreement on the terms of the transaction with the seller, pay by bank transfer, and try to have the seller move out and deregister from the property before the transaction. A visit to a notary, however, will most likely not save you.
For those ready to dive into the long version with details, read on – it will be interesting, I promise!
The Larisa Dolina Case: Seized Both the Apartment and 112 Million Rubles
First, let's analyze the situation with Larisa Dolina's apartment – since it has caused the most stir in the media (especially since the long-awaited court decision documents have finally appeared, not just journalists' retellings).
Here's how the situation initially looked according to open sources: in April 2024, scammers 'from the FSB' contacted the artist and convinced her that her money and apartment in Khamovniki were 'in danger' – and the only way to 'save' them was to urgently sell the apartment and transfer the money to a 'safe account.' Following the scammers' instructions, Dolina sells the apartment for 112 million rubles (which she gives to the scammers along with 68 million rubles from her personal savings).
The buyer was found by a real estate agency that Dolina contacted (as it turned out later, it was a very fashionable agency, Whitewill, which also earned a whopping 4.5 million rubles from this story). The buyer was a 34-year-old single mother, Polina Lurie (the source of payment for the apartment was Lurie's personal savings + money from her parents and loan funds).
However, after the sale, Larisa Dolina refused to move out of the apartment – reports say that five tough guys even allegedly came and tried to evict her (apparently, unsuccessfully). In the end, Dolina realized she had become a victim of fraud and went to court with a lawsuit to declare the transaction invalid; Lurie filed a counterclaim to evict the singer; and on top of that, a criminal case was opened for fraud.
The trial was held behind closed doors, but the other day on Pikabu, the full court decision from the first instance was leaked. Judging by the fact that all the main facts presented there correspond to the official Appellate Ruling of the Moscow City Court dated 08.09.2025, this document is quite real, so we will rely on it as well.
In short, the outcome of the proceedings is as follows: the court considered Dolina mentally unstable and the transaction itself to have been made under the influence of a delusion. Therefore, the apartment must be taken from the buyer and returned to Dolina, but the singer is not obliged to return the money to anyone.
You see, Dolina allegedly did not count the cash received for the apartment (although she correctly recorded all the amounts in handwritten receipts) – and during the criminal investigation, she repeatedly changed her testimony about how and in what amounts she received the money. So, despite the surveillance camera footage from Alfa-Bank (which shows Dolina and Lurie receiving 111 million rubles, counting it, and putting it in Dolina's safe deposit box), the court decided that 'no evidence was provided that unequivocally proves the compensatory nature of the concluded transaction' (!).
In other words: essentially, it seemed to the court that Larisa Dolina had allegedly transferred her apartment to the buyer 'just because,' without any payment (and if there was a payment, the buyer should get it directly from the scammers to whom Dolina voluntarily gave the money – seriously, that's what it says!).
Recently, by the way, information emerged that Dolina herself has been receiving death threats, and a criminal case has been opened in this regard. It is not entirely clear whether the threats are from Lurie herself or from 'grateful haters' on the internet. In any case, we strongly condemn any threats!
Although, we perfectly understand the emotions of those who have moral and ethical questions for Larisa Dolina as a result of this case. After all, she least resembles an 'innocent old lady who obviously has no means to compensate a bona fide buyer for damages'... (By the way, even more mind-blowing facts about Dolina's behavior are provided here in a brief summary of the case by the well-known lawyer Vladimir Mnatsakanov.)
How typical is the Larisa Dolina case?
We have come across the opinion in some places that Dolina's case has become a landmark precedent and has now supposedly opened the floodgates for courts to grant a wave of similar claims. In reality, this is not the case at all: any lawyer who knows how to work with court archives will confirm that there were plenty of similar cases long before Larisa Dolina.
How common are such cases in general? According to official statistics from the judicial department (section 2), a total of 3,118 disputes over registered rights to real property were considered in 2024 – unfortunately, we do not know what proportion of them specifically concerned pensioners led by fraudsters. Of these claims, 2,130 were fully granted, and 287 were partially granted (meaning that approximately 77% of the claims that went to court were granted). UPD: As I write here, a more detailed search of court records found only 350 similar cases over the three years 2023–2025, and the grandmothers lost slightly more than half of them.
Is that a lot or a little? Well, here it is written that in 2024, 1.6 million properties were sold on the secondary market, and in 2023 – 2.45 million. It turns out that on average, about 2 million transactions occur on the secondary market per year, and only 3,000 of them are challenged in court – that's about 0.15%. Not that much – but not exactly a small number either! If you are planning to buy an apartment from an elderly seller, the probability of encountering a granny with scammers (and having problems in court later) will likely be much higher for you.
I also want to comment on the frequently encountered opinion that 'this is just black PR from developers – they want to scare people with their fakes so they only buy new builds!' We assure you, the cases we have reviewed are more than real – below we will discuss a dozen cases where the sources are not journalists' retellings, but actual court decisions. All claims about 'black PR from developers' are made without any evidence (and for some reason, people take them on faith – I wrote about this in more detail here on my channel).
Analyzing 10 Court Disputes over Residential Real Estate
The main question we will try to answer in our article is 'what actions can a buyer take to maximize the probability of winning a court dispute over an apartment, should it come to that?'.
To do this, we will analyze a dozen specific court cases whose decisions are publicly available online. In this section, we will simply provide brief descriptions of these cases, and we will share our conclusions based on their analysis in the following sections. Please note: we have intentionally included not only cases that ended with the apartment being seized, but also those where the buyer ultimately won – because only by comparing them can we understand what the key 'recipe for success' was!
Cases where the buyer lost and the apartment was taken away:
Case 1: Larisa Dolina. The very case we discussed at the beginning of the article.
Case 2: The deluded granny-assistant to the Central Bank. Decision of the Oktyabrsky District Court of Saransk dated 10.04.24, No. 2-436/2024 (upheld by the Ruling of the First Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction dated 22.01.2025). The story is almost identical to Dolina's: in 2023, scammers posing as FSB/Central Bank employees convinced the victim that her apartment was under threat and needed to be sold urgently for 1.9 million rubles (and the proceeds transferred to a 'safe account'). The court declared the transaction invalid because it 'was made as a result of the seller's delusion' – in the end, the apartment was taken from the buyer, but the court did not force the seller to return the money (it 'would contradict the foundations of morality,' since she gave the money to the scammers!).
Case 3: The overly emotional grandmother. Appellate Ruling of the Moscow City Court dated May 22, 2025, in case No. 33-18625/2025. Same story: in 2022, scammers 'from the Central Bank' convinced a grandmother to privatize and sell her apartment. The first buyer soon resold the property to a second one (and there was a mortgage, a bank check, notarial certification – the whole nine yards!). In the end, the court recognized the second buyer as a bona fide purchaser, but still took the apartment from him through vindication in favor of the original seller – because a psychiatric evaluation, although it found the grandmother sane (capable of understanding the meaning of her actions), noted her excessive emotionality and suggestibility. By the way, here's an interesting fact: even if your apartment is taken away by a court, you will still owe the bank for the mortgage loan! (I discussed this nuance in more detail on my channel here).
Case 4: This is a St. Petersburg showdown. Appellate Ruling of the Civil Cases Collegium of the St. Petersburg City Court dated November 12, 2024, in case No. 33-28227/2024. For a change, this isn't about a grandmother: a buddy of an alcoholic and drug addict from St. Petersburg first turned him in to the cops, and then forced him to write a power of attorney to sell his apartment 'to grease the FSB's palms and sort things out.' The crook then sold the apartment to his mother, who sold it to another buyer for 9 million rubles (again, mortgage, title insurance, the whole shebang). Later, the alcoholic came to his senses and sued – the court decided that since the original seller was misled, the very first sale transaction was invalid. Consequently, the apartment had to be taken from the final buyer and returned to the addict. They also declared the final buyer to be in bad faith (low price, didn't notice the quick resale of the apartment) – probably so the insurance company wouldn't have to pay him for the loss of title...
Case 5: When the psychiatrist and notary turned out to be jokers. Resolution of the Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in case No. 8G-15077/2025. A grandmother, under the influence of scammers, sold her apartment for 2.3 million rubles and refused to move out. Interestingly, there was a psychiatric examination and a notarized transaction – but both the psychiatrist and the notary later said in court, 'the old lady was acting strange, the sale price seemed too low, but we signed off on it anyway, lol.' As a result, the court ordered a new psychiatric evaluation, which diagnosed the grandmother with a mental disorder ('age-related characteristics deprived her of the ability to understand what was happening...') – the apartment was taken from the buyer.
Case 6: A traitor to the Motherland in retirement. Appellate Ruling of the Moscow City Court dated June 2, 2025, No. 33-23048/2025. A classic: phone scammers tricked a grandmother (under the pretext of protecting her from allegedly already occurred financing of Ukraine from her bank accounts) into selling her apartment – the buyer took out a mortgage of 6 million rubles for 30 years. The grandmother ultimately refused to move out of the apartment, a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation showed she was sane (albeit with heightened emotionality), but the court still decided: since the granny sold her only home and was deceived by scammers (who had already been imprisoned by that time) – the sale and purchase agreement must be terminated as it was concluded under the influence of deceit/delusion.
Cases where the buyer won and kept the apartment:
Case 7: The realtor with a business sense. Ruling of the Seventh Cassation Court dated April 23, 2025, No. 88-6149/2025 (text here). Phone scammers 'from the Central Bank' convinced a citizen in the summer of 2023 to 'fictitiously sell' her apartment 'to protect it from scammers.' A realtor bought the apartment for 3.5 million rubles and immediately resold it to another buyer for 4 million rubles (who took out a mortgage). The original seller, after recovering from the shock (and transferring all the money to the scammers, of course), went to court – but the court found enough circumstantial evidence that the seller understood the meaning of the transaction (agreed on the terms of the sale contract, discussed the nuances of moving out), so the apartment remained with the final buyer.
Case 8: A special operation for a real man. Appellate Ruling of the Civil Cases Collegium of the Kaluga Regional Court dated March 25, 2025, in case No. 33-820/2025. For once, it's a man, not a grandmother! Under the influence of hooligans, he sold his apartment for 3 million rubles (the buyer took out a mortgage). He immediately transferred the money to the scammers and then refused to move out, claiming it was actually a 'pretend special operation.' The court examined the messenger correspondence with the buyer and concluded that the seller himself had taken active steps to sell (he should have understood where it was leading) – and he never mentioned any 'fictitious nature' to the buyer. So, the transaction was without a defect of will, and the apartment could not be taken from the buyer.
Case 9: Tracked by IP. Decision of the Leninsky District Court of Voronezh in case No. 2-4511/2024 dated February 19, 2025. A pensioner and a disabled person of the II group found herself a mentor for trading Gazprom shares, who 'earned her a large sum on the stock exchange,' but to receive it – you guessed it, she had to sell her apartment (don't ask about the logic, I don't get it myself). The apartment was sold through Domclick for 5.2 million rubles (the pensioner claims it was 30% below market price), the money went to the 'genius trader,' and the granny flatly refused to move out. The court took into account that before the transaction, the pensioner underwent an examination by a psychiatrist who gave the green light (and the court did not admit a new psychiatric evaluation, as it could not establish what her state was at the time of the transaction). She also posted an ad to sell the apartment on Avito from her own IP address – which confirms her will. The apartment was left with the buyer, and the grandmother had to move out.
Case 10: Have a gin and get out of the flat. Ruling of the First Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction dated September 18, 2024, No. 88-23591/2024). In 2022, a citizen, under the influence of phone scammers, contacted the real estate agency 'Krasny Dzhin' (sorry!), and they helped her sell her apartment for 6 million rubles – the new owners immediately resold the flat for 6.5 million rubles (Domclick was also involved at this stage). The court noted that before the transaction, the seller deregistered from the apartment, dismantled the furniture, and moved out with her belongings – which means she understood that a sale of property was taking place => no defect of will => no grounds to declare the transaction invalid.
Legal 101: Why do courts take away apartments?
First, we'll have to discuss a bit of legal theory. The reasoning of courts in such cases varies – you need to understand its logic at least a little, as it will determine how you should defend yourself against all this. But after reading our legal primer, you'll understand the issues of challenging real estate transactions no worse than many professional lawyers! =)
Look, from a legal point of view, any transaction is a unity of two elements: will (in this case, the internal desire to sell the apartment) and expression of will (the expression of will in the form of a signature on the contract). In our cases with grandmothers, the signature (expression of will) is there, but the real desire to lose the home (will) is not. The court classifies such situations as a 'transaction with a defect of will' – that is, it concludes that the seller's true will was directed not at selling the apartment, but at 'saving it from scammers,' 'participating in catching scammers,' and so on.
All court decisions on seizing apartments from buyers and returning them to sellers due to a defect of will can be divided into two large groups: by restitution and by vindication.
1. RESTITUTION
Restitution is a legal term for the consequences of an invalid transaction. If a court declares a transaction invalid, it is basically assumed that the parties must return to the original state they were in before the transaction. That is, by default, the court should order the buyer to return the apartment and the seller to return the money (here, of course, a separate question remains – how to get it from the grandmother if she has already given all the money to scammers, but oh well).
Unfortunately, in practice, in cases involving pensioners, courts often apply an approach that can be called unilateral restitution – that is, they only oblige the buyer to return the apartment, but not the seller to return the money. In accordance with paragraph 4 of Article 167 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the court has the right not to apply the consequences of the invalidity of a transaction if their application would contradict the foundations of law and order or morality.
But there is an important nuance here: even if the court, when declaring the transaction invalid, did not specify the need for the seller to return the funds, you can still try to fight and file a separate lawsuit against the seller for the recovery of unjust enrichment. At least, in other disputes at the Supreme Court level, an approach has been formed that the refusal to apply full restitution does not prevent the subsequent filing of a claim for the recovery of unjust enrichment (lawyer Alexander Malyutin discusses this issue in more detail in this post on his channel).
Now let's figure out what grounds the court may have for seizing an apartment as part of restitution (we will also try to immediately give practical advice on what the line of legal defense might be in each case).
🐌 Article 170 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Sham and Pretended Transaction). Provides for the invalidity of a transaction that was concluded only for show or to cover up another transaction. There are attempts to challenge on this basis, but in our case, this is a gross error, because for this rule to apply, the will of both parties to the transaction must be directed at other legal consequences, not just the seller's. If the buyer really signed the contract with the intention of buying an apartment for himself, then Article 170 of the Civil Code cannot be applied, and the courts confirm this.
🐌 Article 179 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Deceit). It is applied when a transaction is made under the influence of deceit, and the will of one of the parties was only formally expressed. By deceit, courts usually mean the seller falling under the influence of scammers. But in fact, from a theoretical point of view, the application of this rule in such cases is also erroneous: to cancel a transaction between a seller and a buyer on this basis, it is necessary to prove that it was the buyer who deceived the seller (or, at least, was aware of it), and not some third-party scammers (who are not a party to the transaction). In case No. 8, which we discussed above, the court decided just that: since the buyer did not deceive anyone, there are no grounds to apply Article 179 of the Civil Code here (the apartment was ultimately left with the buyer).
🐌 Article 178 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Mistake). The courts proceed from the fact that the seller had false ideas about the transaction (unlike deceit, this does not require intent on the part of the other party to the transaction). Here, as a defense, one can argue that a mistake in the motive of the transaction is not a basis for challenging it: the seller's will was indeed aimed at the legal termination of ownership, and the mistake concerned only the purpose (motive) of this sale. In case No. 8, the court decided just that – it did not cancel the transaction.
🐌 Article 177 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Incapacity). Provides for the invalidity of a transaction made by a citizen who was not able to understand the meaning of his actions or control them. At the same time, it is not necessary for the citizen to be legally incapacitated or have a mental illness. The conditions under which this rule can be applied also include temporary phenomena: stress or grief, a state of fear, the influence of alcoholic beverages.
This is the trickiest thing, and the hardest to defend against in practice. The main problem here is that the court can always order a new psychological evaluation post-factum on this matter – and they almost always give vague, blurry results like 'well... the grandmother seems to be capable of understanding her actions... but at the same time, she is old, suggestible, with heightened emotionality...'. And the court, if it wishes, can interpret this in any way. A psychiatric examination of the seller at the time of the transaction can be very helpful here – but even that is not a 100% guarantee (we will discuss this in more detail below).
2. VINDICATION
Vindication (Article 302 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation) is the recovery of property from someone else's unlawful possession. It is applied in cases where the final buyer of an apartment acquired it not from the original owner (the grandmother), but from someone else to whom the granny had already sold the property. It turns out that vindication can only occur with a combination of two factors:
The apartment has changed owners more than once – consequently, there is no direct sale and purchase agreement between the current owner and the original seller-grandmother.
The original transaction between the grandmother and the previous buyer was declared invalid by the court (for example, due to a defect of will – for the reasons we discussed in the previous section).
When deciding to take an apartment from the current owner and return it to the original one (the grandmother), courts follow this logic: the original owner had no intention of selling the apartment to the first buyer. This means the transaction is invalid due to the absence of will to sell. If the first transaction was invalid, then the first buyer did not actually become the owner of the apartment => which means he had no right to sell it to the second buyer either. Consequently, the second buyer (the current owner of the property) could not become the owner of the apartment and must return it to the original grandmother.
The whole horror of vindication is that you, as the final buyer, could have perfectly checked the legal purity of the transaction you are entering into – but if at a previous (or even pre-previous) stage, there was a hyper-suggestible grandmother who can challenge that very first transaction (which took place without your participation at all), your apartment will still be taken away, alas.
Accordingly, protection against vindication lies in the fact that when buying a property, it is advisable to learn its history 'in depth' for at least a few years – to make sure that everything looked decent in previous transactions as well. After all, if it comes to court, your only chance will be to hope that you can prove the adequacy of that very first transaction (and the previous buyer may not try very hard in this regard – after all, if they lose, it's not them who will lose the apartment...).
Shocking Content: Good Faith Won't Save Your Apartment
There is a popular belief that apartments are supposedly taken only from bad-faith buyers – and if the court recognizes you as a bona fide purchaser (who has carefully checked everything they could), then in this case, by law, the property should remain yours.
Well, unfortunately, that's complete nonsense. Your good faith in the purchase, even if proven in court, will in no way prevent your apartment from being taken away and given to the grandmother – neither in the case of restitution nor in the case of vindication! Alas, but that's the law: the violated will of the pensioner turns out to be more important here than your good faith (more precisely, these two factors are, as it were, completely independent).
However, if the court does recognize you as a bona fide purchaser, it may help you at least get monetary compensation for the lost apartment in two cases:
1. Compensation from the state under Article 68.1 of the Law on State Registration of Real Estate
In accordance with this rule, a bona fide purchaser from whom a residential property has been reclaimed through vindication in accordance with Article 302 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation is entitled to a one-time compensation payment from the treasury of the Russian Federation. The compensation is determined based on the amount of actual damage, or the cadastral value of the residential property (minus any damages that have already been reimbursed to the buyer) – see Ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated November 10, 2022, No. 2941-O.
You've already figured out the catch, right? This rule allows you to receive compensation from the state only in the case of vindication, not restitution! That is, if you bought an apartment in good faith, and then the court canceled one of the transactions that occurred much earlier in the chain due to a defect of will, you can count on compensation from the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. But if you bought the property directly from the grandmother, and she later managed to prove her insanity in court, then you get nothing, no compensation... An example from practice: Ruling of the Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction dated April 13, 2023, in case No. 88-8034/2023.
2. Compensation from an insurance company if you have a title insurance policy
Title insurance is most often taken out along with a mortgage, and it is designed to compensate for losses in the event of losing ownership of real estate by court order. But there is a nuance: the insurance rules often state that the insurance company is obliged to pay only if the buyer was a bona fide purchaser. (I wrote a separate detailed post on this topic on my channel with an analysis of policies from different insurance companies.)
There's even a separate trap here: since we saw above that, by law, the purchaser's good faith has no effect on the seizure of an apartment through restitution or vindication, courts often don't write anything about it in their decisions at all.
In which cases good faith will still save the apartment
Generally, strictly speaking, from a legal point of view, good faith can sometimes help you keep your apartment – it's just that all these cases are not related to the topic of our article today ('crazy grannies under the influence of scammers'). We'll briefly tell you about such cases, just so you have an idea:
Seller's bankruptcy. In bankruptcy proceedings, transactions are often challenged on the suspicion that the debtor was transferring assets to related parties to circumvent their creditors. As a rule, if you buy an apartment from a seller who is not related to you at market value and pay by bank transfer, in most cases such a transaction will not be challenged.
Violation of third-party rights – for example, disputes with heirs or spouses whose consent was not obtained. It's simple here: demand the spouse's consent for the transaction! But even if it wasn't there, as a rule, a bona fide purchaser manages to protect the transaction and keep the apartment (see Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 13.07.2021 No. 35-P and Ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 18.03.2025 No. 89-KG24-14-K7).
Violation of state rights. These can be examples of violations of the privatization procedure, violations of the state's rights as the owner of escheat property. Here too, the courts generally adhere to the position that a bona fide citizen cannot be deprived of housing due to a violation of which he could not have known (see Resolution No. of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 02.10.2025 32-P/2025 and Ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 22.07.2025 No. 5-KG25-82-K2).
Red Flags: Which Deals to Be Wary Of
Let's return to our main topic of grandmothers susceptible to the sweet voices of phone scammers and try to discuss how to protect yourself from them. We have to be honest from the start: the easiest way not to lose the apartment you bought is to not get involved in dubious deals where the seller is indeed a deceived pensioner.
Therefore, we suggest discussing the red flags that will allow you to recognize the increased risk of such a situation. We will divide them into two groups: the absolute worst signs, when you should walk away from the deal altogether; and 'bad, but not terrible' – when there might be an innocent explanation for the circumstance (however, you should still be on guard).
The most critical red flags (a reason to walk away from the deal):
🚩🚩🚩 Very unusual circumstances and terms of the deal, including extreme urgency. If the seller agrees to all your conditions and pushes you to close the deal as quickly as possible (including bypassing any legal checks and document analysis), then there is a high probability that they are being pushed by scammers.
🚩🚩🚩 The property price is significantly below market value. Of course, we all want to buy a great apartment for less. But if the seller is willing to give it away for 30% less than comparable properties, then something is probably wrong here, right?
🚩🚩🚩 Multiple rapid transfers of ownership of the apartment in the recent past. As you remember, it is in such a case that you face a very real risk of encountering vindication.
🚩🚩🚩 The seller refuses to communicate personally with the buyer and/or shows visible signs of stress, anxiety, or fear. Scammers often try to limit the victim's contacts – if the seller avoids communicating with you for unclear reasons, it's a reason to think. In general, if you are buying an apartment from an elderly person, it would be good to talk to their younger relatives as well – to make sure that everything is okay with them in life.
🚩🚩🚩 The seller cannot clearly explain the reasons for selling the apartment, where they will spend the money, and where they will live afterwards. In short, you need to make sure that the granny has some kind of life plan (and is ready to stick to it) – this information, by the way, would be good to verify with her relatives.
Softer red flags (a reason to be cautious and 'prepare for the worst'):
🚩 Elderly seller. I don't want to be ageist here and criticize pensioners, but unfortunately, based on reviewing a large number of court decisions, it seems that this is indeed a high-risk factor.
🚩 Selling the only home. The decision to sell one's only home is not made spontaneously – it most likely indicates that something serious has happened in the person's life. You need to have a very good understanding of the seller's life plan here (otherwise, the court will later remind you that 'leaving an old woman without her only apartment is immoral!').
🚩 The seller's categorical refusal of non-cash payment – why would they need that? To immediately give a wad of cash to a courier 'from the FSB'?
🚩 The owner or their relatives remain registered in the apartment. This may indicate that the seller and their family have nowhere to move – which means they are more likely to consider the sale of the apartment a 'fictitious transaction'.
🚩 Sale by power of attorney. This is especially relevant if there is no clear evidence that the owner is in another country. If the owner's physical absence from the transaction looks suspicious, it's a reason to thoroughly check the power of attorney + figure out if you believe the 'story' offered to explain the situation.
What will protect you if it goes to court
Based on the ten cases reviewed, we have compiled a summary table of key factors – what the court paid attention to when making a decision (to declare the original transaction invalid and take the apartment from the buyer, or to leave it with them).
It's immediately striking that there are no '100% effective' ways to defend against a granny's legal attack: almost every factor is found in both lost and won cases. But there are certain correlations: in cases that ended well for the buyer, there are, on average, many more green checkmarks – that is, these points have a rather positive influence on the court's decision. Let's try to analyze the resulting patterns in more detail.
WHAT WILL LIKELY HELP IN COURT
🐌 Any evidence that the seller themselves took active steps to sell the apartment and was planning to move out. Essentially, we need to show the court that there is no defect of will in the transaction – and the seller perfectly understood that by signing the sale and purchase agreement, they were in fact losing their home. What can help with this:
The seller themselves contacted a realtor to sell the apartment, or posted the sale ad themselves. In case No. 9, the court even checked the IP addresses to prove that the ad on Avito was posted from the pensioner's home computer (the buyer won that case). So, just in case, take a screenshot of the ad you are responding to, and ask the seller for a copy of their contract with the realtor/real estate agency.
The seller actively communicated directly with the buyer, explaining the sale of the apartment with some reasonable reasons (moving, buying another home, etc.). The option 'all communication was through a realtor, we only saw the seller at the signing of the contract' is not suitable for you here – you need to save evidence of active communication with the seller at all stages of the transaction (it's better if traces of this communication are preserved in a messenger/email). Clarify the reason for selling the apartment in the correspondence; ask where the seller will live afterwards; ask if scammers (or employees of the Central Bank/FSB) have called them and asked them to sell the apartment. The presence of evidence is critical here: in case No. 2, the buyer referred to the fact that the seller explained the reason for the sale as moving – but could not prove it, as it was not recorded in any way (the court noted the lack of proof of this argument and did not take it into account).
The seller themselves agreed on the terms of the contract and made edits to its draft. The court's logic here is simple: if you are negotiating the key terms of the transaction, you understand what is happening. Again, all communication on these matters must be recorded in writing – negotiate in a messenger and email, not orally! And specifically with the seller themselves, not with the realtor.
The seller discussed and agreed on the details of the apartment transfer (moving out, removing belongings, deregistering, paying utility bills, etc.). In the lost cases, the situation often looks like this: after signing the contract and receiving the money, the grandmother declares, 'it was all just pretend, I'm not moving out of the apartment!'. In the won cases, the seller most often took direct actions to move out – which suggests that they understood the essence of the transaction to alienate the property. Therefore, it is in your best interest to ideally arrange it so that during the closing of the transaction, you can get the keys and move in immediately – that is, by this point, the seller has already deregistered, moved out their belongings, and left the property themselves. It wouldn't even be superfluous to conduct an inspection of the apartment before the transaction for this purpose – take photos, record the seller's departure with an act (also save the certificate of absence of registered persons in the apartment).
This is a less critical factor, but in case No. 8, the court separately noted that the seller themselves obtained the notarized consent of their spouse for the sale of the apartment (the buyer won this case). It will be important for the legal purity of the transaction in any case – so, don't forget to check the seller's marital status by the stamps in their passport.
🐌 The seller's concealment of information about the fictitious nature of the transaction. It sounds funny, but yes – in most of the won cases, the court directly emphasized that the seller, during communication with the buyer, did not inform them of the fictitious nature of the transaction. Therefore, it would be good for you to have written evidence (again, in a messenger/email) that a dialogue between you and the seller on this topic took place, and they did not confess that 'it's all just pretend.' Lawyer Alexander Malyutin (my co-author for the article) generally recommends including a separate preamble in the contract, where it is written in simple language that 'the transaction is real' – read more here on his channel.
🐌 Non-cash payment for the transaction. If the seller insists exclusively on cash payment, it's a reason to be wary – it will be easier for them to immediately give all the money to scammers, and the court will later say 'so the grandmother didn't even actually receive the money!'. Therefore, try to conduct the transaction in non-cash form whenever possible.
🐌 Using special services to check the legal purity of the transaction. In several cases that ended well for the buyer, the court separately noted the presence of transaction verification results from services like Domclick (although in case No. 6, this did not help). At the very least, this will be a plus for you in building the image of a bona fide and prudent buyer (where it may play a role).
🐌 The seller undergoing a psychiatric examination before the transaction with the issuance of a certificate-conclusion. Please note – this is not about the standard certificate stating that 'the seller is not registered at a neuropsychiatric dispensary,' but specifically about a separate psychological-psychiatric assessment of the seller's condition before the transaction (it can even be done right before the notary). In case No. 9, a certificate of such an examination helped a lot: the court did not rely on the results of a separate new psychiatric evaluation ordered by the seller post-factum for the court – as it considered the results of the assessment of the grandmother's condition immediately before the transaction to be more relevant. (However, in case No. 5, the psychiatrist didn't help much – as he later came to court and said 'yeah, the old lady was acting strange from the start, idk why I gave her a clean certificate...').
There is an opinion that good and honest examinations are conducted by the V.P. Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry (but there is conflicting information on whether it provides pre-trial conclusions, or if this state center can only be used for a full-fledged forensic examination).
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE FOLLOWING MEASURES IS QUESTIONABLE
🐌 Notarization of the sale and purchase transaction. There is a popular belief that this is almost the most effective, overpowered way to guarantee a win in court. However, in the cases we reviewed, we could not find a single example where the court referred to the notarization of the transaction as a significant factor in its decision. On the contrary, in cases No. 3 and No. 5, the buyer lost in court despite visiting a notary.
🐌 Title insurance for real estate. By itself, it won't help you win in court, but it gives hope of receiving compensation from the insurance company in case of an unfavorable outcome. Unfortunately, these insurance policies have a number of nuances that significantly reduce their effectiveness – I discussed this in more detail in this post on my channel. In short: without a mortgage, it's hard to get proper title insurance, and insurance companies often try to insert special loopholes into policies to avoid paying (in case No. 4, the insurance company itself filed an appeal, and circumstantial evidence suggests that the sole purpose of this appeal was to get an official confirmation from the court of the buyer's bad faith, so they wouldn't have to pay out the insurance). And if the base risk of losing an apartment in court is 0.15% (as we discussed at the beginning of the article), and the insurance company wants 0.3–1.0% per year for the policy, then this deal doesn't look so profitable anymore...
🐌 Alternative transaction, when the seller simultaneously buys a new apartment while selling their old one. In general, this option looks very effective for preventing legal problems later on – it's just that it's not particularly common in court practice (which is a hint), which is why it ended up in this section. The idea here is that if the grandmother immediately exchanges one apartment for another during the transaction, then, firstly, the bulk of the money will almost certainly not end up with scammers. And secondly, the granny must surely understand that she will not be left homeless (that is, the essence of the transaction here is, by definition, 'exchanging one living space for another'). But, of course, preparing and organizing such a multi-part transaction is much more difficult than a simple one-sided sale.
We hope you found this interesting! If you like the article and it gets a lot of likes, we will make a sequel with an analysis of the most common questions about 'granny' court disputes. To not miss the next articles on the topic, subscribe to my Telegram channel RationalAnswer about finance, as well as to the channel 'Read in the Law' of Alexander Malyutin – the lawyer who shared his expertise for this guide.
In particular, you may find interesting additional posts on the topic from our channels, where we have previously discussed various aspects of the risks of losing real estate due to scammers:
How to end up without an apartment and with a mortgage debt: why losing an apartment in court does not release you from your obligation to the bank.
Title insurance for real estate: does it protect against deceived grannies?
How one paragraph in a contract can save you from losing your apartment: what you need to write in the contract to make it easier to prove the grandmother's will in court later.
Invalidity of a transaction: how to get your money back for an apartment.