In late April, the House of Representatives passed a law to introduce national IDs for real estate. The law calls for the creation of a unified national database of all real-estate properties, each of which will be assigned an individual number. These numbers will be printed on plaques that will be affixed to all properties.
As a result, every real-estate unit — freestanding house, apartment, factory, office, or vacant plot — will have its own unique “digital fingerprint”. The database will contain all the technical, legal, and administrative information about the property, including its address, usage, ownership, licensing, violations, and transaction records.
The new system will greatly simplify property transactions. For example, it will enable ownership verification without having to obtain certifications and authorisations from a court. It will also prevent real-estate fraud through the centralised compilation of accurate documentation of property-related details.
The new ID for real estate aligns with Egypt’s comprehensive Vision 2030 development plans, which call for digital transformation and support the sale of Egyptian real estate to Egyptians abroad and foreign purchasers.
Under the 14-article law, real estate is defined as land, buildings, and structures of all kinds, regardless of purpose or use and whether utilised or not. The goal is to generate an authoritative digital map of the whole country. The Military Survey Authority will be in charge of producing and updating the map.
Local municipal departments or their counterparts in the new satellite communities will be responsible for delivering or installing the national ID plaques, which will be deemed state property. Damaging, tampering with, or altering them in any way is strictly prohibited.
Only authorised government personnel will be allowed to make changes based on official approval from the relevant authority. Violators will be subjected to penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, depending on the nature and intention of the damage.
The new system will also facilitate the detection of property encroachments, the calculation of property taxes, and the improvement of the real-estate investment environment in Egypt. It will help prospective buyers make informed and safe decisions by ensuring access to verified information on the properties they have set their hearts on.
As Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli explained in a press conference last week, the deficiencies in current property registration records have long hampered property ownership verification.
The new ID project for real estate will end any doubts and disputes surrounding property ownership. It will streamline owner verification processes, eliminating the need to go to court for the purpose, and it will greatly reduce the risk of fraud and protect citizens’ property rights.
“Investors face considerable challenges when buying property in Egypt because much real estate is unregistered,” Madbouli said. He added that the Government itself faces problems in cases of expropriation when it discovers that some properties are not registered in the owners’ names.
Another aim of the law is to support Egypt’s real-estate export initiative, especially dollar-based investments. The transparency afforded by the new system will attract real-estate investors — whether Egyptian expatriates or foreigners — in the market for trustworthy investment opportunities.
According to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, the system will safeguard citizens’ rights and benefit Egyptians living abroad. He stressed that the new law imposes no additional obligations or financial burdens on property owners.
It will not affect private property rights or override any of the provisions of the law on resolving building violations. People already in the process of settling issues related to zoning or building code violations in accordance with this law will not face further complications.
An advantage of the new system for Egyptian expatriates, Fawzi said, is that they will be able to complete all the necessary procedures electronically, without having to travel to or be physically present in Egypt.
Shamseddin Youssef, a board member of the Egyptian Federation for Construction and Building Contractors, described the new system as a much-needed modernisation of documentation systems that will bring Egypt up to date with the developed countries.
“If I’m in Aswan and want to buy a house in Cairo, I’ll be able to access the property’s data and construction history through its national ID. The difference will be like the before-and-after when personal ID cards were introduced,” he said.
Compiling data linked to every property in the country offers the government a great opportunity to rectify problems and avoid arbitrary decision-making, MP Khaled Abdel-Aziz Fahmy told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“This is not just about residential property. It covers industrial and administrative spaces as well. It will help us understand the country’s needs. The new law is very much in the citizen’s interest. It will make dealing with Government agencies much easier,” he said.
“The law is expected to expand the real estate market and boost investment,” Youssef added.
Mohamed Hisham, a senior urban planner at an international engineering consultancy firm, hailed the law as “an extremely important step towards promoting sound governance and urban planning, and towards the development of smart cities in line with global trends.”
“It addresses one of the most pressing urban planning challenges, namely, the effective management of growth based on certified information and transparency. This is about more than urban management and enforcing regulations; it’s about ensuring sustainable development.”
Hisham stressed that in preventing building code and zoning violations, the law will significantly reduce encroachments on agricultural land, especially in rural areas of the Nile Delta.
The new real-estate ID database will include precise geographic coordinates of all properties together with detailed surveys, making it harder to manipulate records.
Another advantage of the new system, he said, is that it will standardise property addresses, thereby eliminating a common problem, especially in the new suburbs: the same property often has different addresses with the various utility water, gas, and electricity services.
While one service lists properties by block and parcel number, another uses street names.
The implementation of the new system will naturally encounter challenges, given the complexity of the task. Hisham underscored the need for a robust digital infrastructure to support it and suggested piloting the project in less densely populated areas, such as Suez, Ismailia, the Red Sea, and the New Valley.
Glitches could then be ironed out before extending the work to complicated areas like Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria.
According to Abdel-Aziz Fahmi, the law’s executive regulations, which still have to be drafted, will specify the procedures for obtaining the assigned property ID.
Regarding fees, Ministry of Housing Spokesperson Amr Khattab said that this question has not been discussed. The most recent parliamentary session on the subject focused on the project’s importance because of the vital need to restructure Egypt’s huge and largely unregulated real-estate sector.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: