By Vitor Antony Ferrari, Ivan Kubala and Nicoly Crepaldi Minchuerri*

In order to ensure greater legal certainty in the purchase, sale and registration of real estate, the legislator chose to adopt a legal mechanism that allows the registration of real estate even if it is not accompanied by all the required documentation: compulsory adjudication. There are common reports of cases in which the buyer of a property is unable to register it due to the absence of documents that should be provided by the debtor, who fails to fulfill his responsibilities, so that there is no deed of purchase and sale of the property.

In order not to harm the buyer, the legislator made it possible to use the Compulsory Adjudication Action, through which the buyer, armed with the documentation he/she has, goes to court seeking the granting of a Letter of Adjudication. Through this document, issued by a magistrate, the buyer proceeds to register his/her property with the Real Estate Registry Office of the property's jurisdiction.

However, until then, the entire Compulsory Adjudication procedure had to be carried out judicially, which implied an increase in costs incurred by the buyer, as he would have to bear the legal costs and attorney's fees.

Furthermore, it was a judicial procedure, which ended up further overloading the already slow judicial system, forcing judges to take turns between compulsory adjudication cases and other processes. Due to such overload, it is common for procedures to be slow, causing stress to the parties, especially the buyer of the property.

That said, in order to make the procedure faster and less costly for the adjudicator, the legislator chose to create an extrajudicial procedure. Introduced by Law 14,382/2022, the compulsory extrajudicial adjudication of real estate can now be done directly at the notary's offices, without the need to contact the judiciary.

In this way, the registration of real estate was reduced bureaucracy, also speeding up the procedure.

After the introduction of the Public Records Law, the National Council of Justice, through Provision No. 150/2023, published in September of this year, regulated all processing of the request with the competent bodies.

Therefore, it is important to emphasize that even though the procedure is extrajudicial, it is essential that the adjudicator observes a series of requirements for his/her request to be granted. It is still a specific procedure, requiring the work of professionals with expertise in the area. It is not, therefore, a mere request made to the competent notary's office. Thus, it is essential that the adjudicator is accompanied by good professionals.

(with the collaboration of Luís Felipe Meira M. Simão)