Lost their apartment due to a debt of 38 thousand rubles
In Krasnoyarsk, bailiffs arrested and sold the apartment of 57-year-old local resident Anna Frolikova because of a debt of 38 thousand rubles. As the woman’s husband, Alexey, told RT, his wife did not even know about the existence of her debt - no loans or mortgages were issued for her. As it turned out, all notifications - about the debt and subsequently about the sale of the apartment - came to her on the State Services portal.
“One fine day, a note is shoved at our door saying that we need to vacate our living space because other people bought our apartment. This is a shock for us,” the man recalls. — My wife doesn’t really use her phone - she has a push-button one, and in general she is far from all technologies, government service applications and the rest. This apartment belongs to her parents, her mother is 85, her father is 87. They transferred the property to their daughter because they were afraid of scammers.”
The note sent by the Frolikovs
When the couple began to understand the situation, it turned out that the home had indeed already been sold.
According to the Frolikovs, an apartment with a market value of at least 5 million was sold for only 3.6 million rubles - this is a million cheaper than even the valuation that a certain NormaVest LLC made at the request of the bailiffs. According to the debtor and her husband, the bailiffs simply sought to sell the property as quickly as possible.
The Frolikovs are convinced that the penalty in their case was disproportionate to the size of the debt. In accordance with paragraph 5 of Art. 4 Federal Law No. 229 “On Enforcement Proceedings”, the volumes of the claimant’s demands and enforcement measures must be comparable.
“In principle, for 38 thousand rubles of debt, you could come and pick up from your home, for example, a TV, a washing machine, a coffee machine, some other household appliances... We have a dacha, a car. But you can’t sell an apartment at half price!” - Frolikov is indignant.
The spouses are also not satisfied with the fact that they were notified about the sale of the apartment at the last minute. According to the same Federal Law No. 229, bailiffs were obliged to properly notify the citizen about the debt and seizure of property. In particular, they could send her a registered letter. At the same time, the bailiffs would retain a barcode that could be used to track when, by whom and where the letter was sent, and whether the recipient took it.
Now the Frolikovs are suing the FSSP in the hope of returning the property that went under the hammer; the process has been dragging on for months. According to Alexey Frolikov, the lawyers working on their case found about 20 similar cases in Krasnoyarsk alone.
They take away the apartment for 16 thousand rubles
Olga Sozinova, a mother of many children from Nizhny Novgorod, may lose the apartment where she lives with her five minor children because of a debt of 16.5 thousand rubles, which the woman found out about at the last moment - when the bailiffs had already begun to seize her accounts.
An extract indicating the amount of Sozinova’s debt
The debt arose due to unpaid cadastral work - since 2013, Sozinova had been suing over her land plot. As it turned out later, in April 2023, because of this debt, enforcement proceedings were opened against her.
“At first they started to seize accounts and write off a few pennies from them. I receive benefits as a mother of many children; I still have some income that could not cover the debt. Further
The bailiff imposed a ban on registration actions on my land plot of 15 acres, apartment of 45 sq. m. m and an apartment of 59.6 sq. m. And just an apartment of 59.6 square meters, the most expensive of the properties, was eventually arrested by the bailiffs and put up for auction,” says the mother of many children.
The woman tried to challenge the arrest of the apartment, but was unsuccessful. After months of trying to understand the situation, she received a notification from the bailiff, who invited her to a conversation with the FSSP Office through the public services portal, setting the meeting time for midnight on February 1.
The notice sent to Sozinova
According to Olga, the situation could have been complicated by the fact that during her enforcement proceedings the bailiff changed: the first bailiff imposed restrictions on the apartment and quit, and the second continued the process that had already begun and seized the property.
An RT source, who previously worked in the structures of the FSSP and wished to remain anonymous, believes that the first bailiff in the Sozinova case showed incompetence by imposing restrictions on the housing of a mother of many children, after which she left her position, and then her replacement got involved in the case without going into details .
“In this situation, most likely, just one incompetent employee, not knowing the law, seized the apartment. Then, obviously, production was transferred to another employee, but she did not investigate and transferred the real estate data to the sales department. The sales department doesn’t care what the situation is: their task is to sell the apartment. Well, they sent it straight away for appraisal and auction. So the system here is such that one incompetent employee starts a process, which then proceeds along the same lines,” believes RT’s interlocutor.
According to Olga Sozinova, the examination and assessment of the value of real estate were carried out in her absence. At the same time, a three-room apartment with a market value of 7-8 million rubles was valued at 3.8 million rubles.
“For some reason, the appraisal was carried out by a Tyumen company that won the government contract, and in October they valued my apartment at 3.8 million rubles. And a month and a half later, a cadastral revaluation of the property was carried out by Rosreestr - and there the same apartment was valued at 5.1 million rubles. Why such a difference in cost? - Olga is perplexed.
She clarified that the bailiffs did not have time to sell the apartment - the woman contacted the media and the prosecutor's office. After Sozinova came to the FSSP office with a film crew and asked the bailiff a question about the discrepancy between the estimate of the cost of the apartment and the price at which it was going to be sold, she received a decision that the enforcement proceedings against her would be suspended for 14 days by the bailiff’s decision.
How the activities of bailiffs are regulated
The Federal Bailiff Service told RT that employees in the Nizhny Novgorod (the story of Olga Sozinova) and Krasnoyarsk (the story of the Frolikovs) departments acted within the framework of the federal law “On Enforcement Proceedings.”
The department confirmed that the work of bailiffs must be carried out in compliance with the principle of correlation between the volume of the claimant’s demands and enforcement measures.
“As a general rule, foreclosure on the debtor’s property is applied in the amount necessary to fulfill the requirements contained in the writ of execution, taking into account the collection of expenses for carrying out enforcement actions and the enforcement fee,” explained the FSSP. “At the same time, according to established law enforcement practice, if the debtor does not have other property commensurate with its value, the seizure and sale of property whose value exceeds the amount of the debt does not contradict the requirements of the law.”
The department emphasized that when selling property whose value exceeds the amount of the debt, it is assumed that the debtor will be returned the funds remaining after satisfying the claimant’s demands. The FSSP also assured that in situations where expensive property - for example, apartments - is seized for relatively small debts, the debtors themselves are usually to blame.
“In the overwhelming majority of cases, foreclosure on the debtor’s property, which significantly exceeds the amount of the debt, is associated with the debtor’s dishonest behavior (the debtor does not comply with the requirements of enforcement documents for a long time, does not appear when called by the bailiff, does not open the door), and also does not has income and funds that can be foreclosed on,” the department explained.
By law, bailiffs are prohibited from foreclosure only on that property that is the only premises suitable for permanent residence of a debtor citizen. However, such “immunity” does not apply to property pledged under a mortgage agreement. In all other cases, the sale of residential premises for debts is also legal, the department notes.
“In the event of a violation of the rights and legitimate interests of the parties to enforcement proceedings, they have the right to appeal to a higher official or to the court for their restoration,” the FSSP summed up.
Sometimes housing can be returned
Volgograd resident Elena Paramonova told RT that in her case, the apartment seized by the bailiffs was the only housing for her and two minor children. The living space was eventually returned, and the FSSP employee who allowed the arrest and sale of the property was held accountable for negligence.
Elena remembers with a shudder a call from a man who told her and the children to move out of their only apartment - at that time the woman had just left the hospital, and the news that her apartment was sold for utility debts came as a real shock.
“These emotions cannot be described in a nutshell. We started to find out how this could happen, that the apartment was taken away. In the end, I figured out where my legs were coming from - the bailiffs of the Krasnooktyabrsky district of Volgograd mistakenly seized the apartment and sold it at auction without notifying me. Moreover, this all happened in the shortest possible time,” Paramonova explained.
The frightened woman began to contact all possible authorities with a request to help her not to stay on the street with her children. During checks, including those organized by the local prosecutor's office, it turned out that the bailiff who seized Elena's property made a mistake. The FSSP employee inattentively read the documents and decided that the seized apartment was not Paramonova’s only home. However, the second piece of real estate, which the bailiff considered to be the property of the debtor, in fact did not belong to her for a long time.
“In the end, we got through, we received answers that yes, the bailiff made a mistake, negligence, and that’s why they seized my living space. At that time the owner was already new - that is, the apartment was actually sold, ownership was transferred. And then I returned it to the court - appealing to the fact that a mistake had been made. The apartment was eventually returned to me,” says Elena.
Like the heroes of previous stories described by RT, Paramonova notes that the apartment was sold at a price much lower than the market price. In her opinion, this was done with the aim of selling the seized property as soon as possible.
“I have a two-room apartment in the city center, and it was first put up for sale for 1.7 million rubles, then they reduced the price by another 100 thousand and sold it at that price. All this happened very quickly, they tried to sell it as soon as possible. The apartment, of course, cost much more - 2.3 million at least,” insists RT’s interlocutor.
The woman’s lawyer, Oleg Puchkov, said that an employee of the Volgograd department of the FSSP, who arrested his client’s apartment and put it up for auction, was eventually held accountable for negligence.
“Such situations sometimes actually arise as a result of negligence, that is, an FSSP employee may not fully understand how much property the debtor has, may not check that some of his property has long been registered in the name of another person, and therefore introduce restrictions. This happens, and is usually explained by the heavy workload or inattention of FSSP employees,” the lawyer explained.
He added that in the situation with Elena, he was alarmed by the very self-confident behavior of the new owners - when communicating with Paramonova, they assured that she would not be able to challenge the deal, and no lawyer would help her, because “they will sort everything out there.” Coupled with the fact that the transaction was carried out in the shortest possible time, this aroused suspicion among the lawyer.
“I immediately had doubts: how is it all sold so quickly and so cheaply? It seems to me that everything is organized there at a slightly different level... But I cannot say that the bailiff was personally interested in the sale of my client’s apartment - as a result of the investigation, her actions were classified simply as negligence. I’m not ready to challenge the correctness of this qualification,” the lawyer stated.
Lawyer's opinion
Retired justice colonel and lawyer Oleg Puchkov told RT that many debtors suffer precisely because they do not promptly check the status of their debts in their personal account at State Services.
According to him, now, according to the law, bailiffs are no longer obliged, as before, to notify the debtor by registered mail - they just need to send a message via State Services. This often causes problems.
“Not all people use, for example, the same “State Services” where these notifications are now sent. As a result, the owners themselves do not control all these processes and may not find out in a timely manner that some kind of enforcement proceedings have been initiated against them,” the lawyer explained.
He added that the situation with the sales of apartments to pensioners and mothers of many children seems unfair, but according to the law, the bailiffs do not care who is registered in the seized apartment.
“The bailiffs care about the status of property rights—who is the owner,” explains the lawyer. - They are not interested in who is registered in the living space: they sold the apartment, the new owner received it - and then he has problems. Discharge residents and deregister. The bailiffs, having established that this is not the debtor’s only home, arrest him and begin selling it.
Everything else is not their problem, and if the debtor is not satisfied with the collection measures applied, he has the right to go to court and appeal them there.”
At the same time, the lawyer emphasized that in situations where debtors’ homes are seized, bailiffs are obliged to act in accordance with the regulations, which, in particular, establishes what property should be seized first. And apartments are in last place on this list.
“The law stipulates the sequence in which funds can be withdrawn to pay off debts. First of all, of course, they are looking for the most liquid funds, that is, money. Then comes various property, for example, vehicles. Real estate is confiscated last - this is specified in the law on enforcement proceedings. The bailiffs know this procedure. And they can sell the property if the debtor has not found any other property that can ensure the execution of the penalty,” explains the lawyer.
If the debtor believes that the bailiffs did not comply with the principle of proportionality of the debt and the value of the seized property, he has the right to go to court with this issue. According to lawyer Puchkov, in situations with apartments it is necessary to fight - but there is a chance that it will not be possible to challenge the decision of the bailiffs.
“If they mistakenly arrested and sold their only home, as in the case of Elena Paramonova, that’s one thing, there are 100% grounds for challenging the transaction. But when we raise the question of the proportionality of the debt and the value of the property, everything is no longer so certain - you can lose the court. However, in such situations, there is a chance to get your property back in any case. We must fight,” the lawyer concluded.