After 65 years: He discovered that his house belongs to the Tel Aviv Municipality

The owner of a private house on the edge of the prestigious Neve Tzedek neighborhood in Tel Aviv (Tartzav Street) recently discovered that the house he purchased 29 years ago had been previously expropriated and at the time of the purchase was registered as the property of the Tel Aviv Municipality. This information was hidden from him by the authorities — the Israel Land Authority and the Tel Aviv Municipality. In a lawsuit he recently filed, he is demanding financial compensation of 26 million shekels from both bodies.

The property on Tartzav Street is a private house standing on a plot of about 300 square meters, which includes a warehouse and a yard. The story of the property began back in September 1961, when the state published an expropriation notice. Thirteen years later, it published a notice of its intention to take possession, and in 1984, the registration was settled, stating that the property had been expropriated and the Tel Aviv Municipality was the registered owner. However, the details of the expropriation were not visible to the public, and the property was not removed from the registry of deeds that allows for changes in ownership.

From the lawsuit filed in the Tel Aviv District Court, it appears that the original landowner probably knew about the expropriation, but he passed away, and a few years later, his wife, who inherited his share, decided to sell the property without knowing about the expropriation. In 1997, the plaintiff purchased the house for 350,000 dollars, a sum that he claims reflected the prices in the neighborhood at that time and proves that he did not know about the expropriation and paid the full price.

Although the property had already been expropriated in 1984, at the time of the purchase, it was still registered in the name of the seller, and the buyer managed to register a cautionary note and subsequently conducted a procedure for its registration. The buyer discovered that the property was not in his ownership only in 2019 when he was about to sell the house. The new buyer wanted to obtain an extract testifying to the registration, but was unable to do so. In 2022, the plaintiff contacted the municipality and was updated on all stages of the registration over the years.

He claims that the state failed twice: once when it did not close the registration registry after the expropriation was settled, and the second time when it did not act to realize the expropriation. "The state, through the Department of Registration and Settlement, is entrusted with managing the real estate registries. The legislator gave it clear powers and it failed in a negligent manner in fulfilling its powers... The entire purpose of the registry is to allow full reliance on the records. The department not only did not provide the required reliance, it created false representations that contradict reality," the lawsuit states.

In the case of the Tel Aviv Municipality, it is claimed that when he asked to transfer the property to his name in the Land Registry (Tabu), the municipality did not bother to inform him that they were the owners, and even had him sign an undertaking to pay a betterment levy in the future upon sale or realization of the building rights.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Moshe Raz Cohen and Drorit Shapir, from the firm Raz Cohen Persher & Co.