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Uzbekistan’s Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis is examining a draft law on shared-equity construction of apartment buildings and other real-estate objects, the National Committee for Sustainable Development of Urbanisation and the Housing Market announced, as criminal cases against several developers and a wave of buyer complaints have pushed the issue into public debate.
The centrepiece of the bill is an escrow mechanism under which buyers’ payments would be held in dedicated bank accounts and released to developers only after specified contractual conditions have been fulfilled. The committee said the system would substantially reduce the risk of fraud and the misappropriation of citizens’ funds — problems that have surfaced repeatedly in recent social-media discussions about construction companies that have missed handover deadlines and refused to return money to buyers.
The committee described as unacceptable any situation in which citizens who have invested in housing are left without the promised apartments and without any means of recovering their money. It did not specify how many buyers are currently in that position, nor did it name all the companies involved, though it noted that criminal proceedings have been opened against the management of several developers. The committee had previously commented on the case surrounding Imarat Development, against whose leadership Tashkent police opened a criminal case on fraud and location-deception charges.
Continuity of construction as a safeguard
Beyond protecting individual buyers, the committee said the escrow model would also guarantee that building work continues even if a developer runs into serious difficulties. If a developer cannot fulfil its obligations, the funds held in escrow could be used to bring in a replacement contractor and complete the project. “Construction will be finished even if the developer cannot meet its commitments,” the committee stated.
Officials framed the broader goal as establishing three pillars for the residential construction sector: reliable protection of buyers’ funds, unconditional fulfilment of developer obligations, and transparent, equal conditions for law-abiding market participants. Specialists cited in the committee’s statement called the introduction of escrow a necessary step both to prevent future crises and to restore public trust in the market for homes sold before completion.
The bill is currently under consideration in the lower house and has not yet been passed into law. No timeline for a vote or for the law’s potential entry into force was given in the committee’s statement.