Israeli Tabu Extract Decoder

Israeli Tabu Extract Decoder

Legal notice

This is a free information tool operated by an AI model. It explains what the entries on a land registry extract mean as categories, and helps you organise your own reading of your own document. All of its outputs are produced automatically by an AI model, with no involvement, review, or approval by an advocate. The output is not legal advice and not a legal opinion. It is a general explanation only: it does not read the underlying deeds or the file of your matter, does not check current case law, does not verify that the document you supplied is authentic or current, and does not examine your specific circumstances. An AI model may err, omit data, or present a wrong conclusion.

This tool does not tell you whether title is good, whether a particular entry is a problem in your transaction, or whether to sign anything. Those questions require a licensed advocate who has seen the whole file. Nothing here may be relied on as evidence, and before signing a contract, paying a deposit, or acting on anything an extract shows, you should consult an advocate. All use of the output is the user's sole responsibility.

Problem

Almost every Israeli property transaction produces a נסח טאבו, and almost nobody can read one. It is a dense page of block and parcel numbers, fractions, ranks, and note types, and the entries that matter most are the ones that look least dramatic. Buyers routinely misread it in both directions: they panic at a mortgage that is about to be discharged, and they miss a note conditioning any dealing on a third party's consent. Two structural facts make it worse. The extract is conclusive evidence only for settled land, and merely prima facie evidence otherwise, so the same document does not prove the same thing everywhere. And a very large share of Israeli homes are not in this register at all, so the reader's first problem is often that no נסח exists for their property and nobody has told them what they should be holding instead.

Problem boundary

This skill explains what an extract says and what each entry type means as a category. It does not value the property, which is israeli-property-appraisal. It does not cover purchase tax, transaction guidance, or rental agreements, which are israeli-real-estate. It does not cover defects in a new apartment from a developer, which is israeli-home-defect-report.

It also stops firmly short of one line: it will not tell you whether the title is good, whether a specific encumbrance defeats your specific deal, or whether it is safe to sign. That is the practice of law and it needs an advocate with the whole file. The skill's job is to make sure you know what to ask about.

Instructions

Read references/entry-types.md before interpreting any line of an extract, and references/registration-regimes.md before answering anything about a property that cannot be found in the register.

Step 0a, three things to say before decoding anything

These need no opinion on this buyer's title, so the refusal in the legal notice does not reach them.

1. Order your own extract. Do not work from the seller's lawyer's copy. It is a counterparty document of unknown vintage, and it may be a consolidated extract, which structurally cannot show this unit's attachments. The register is public (סעיף 124) and anyone may obtain a copy.
2. An extract speaks only as at the moment it was produced. Re-check before signing and before each payment, not once at the start.
3. Register a caveat in your own favour, early. The skill explains caveats as things other people have; for a buyer the point is to have one. A caveat blocks a contradicting registration and shields the beneficiary against a later attachment or insolvency (סעיף 127). Since a transaction is completed only by registration (סעיף 7), the caveat is what protects the gap between signing and transfer. Do not let material money move before it is on the page, and check the extract for a caveat already registered in favour of a different buyer, which is the clearest double-sale signal visible on the document.

Step 0b, establish what document the user actually has

Ask before interpreting. Three different documents get called "the tabu" in conversation:

1. A land registry extract for a property registered in the register.
2. A rights confirmation from the Israel Land Authority, for land it manages that is not registered in the register.
3. A statement from a housing company (חברה משכנת), which is not a public register at all.

They prove different things and they are not interchangeable. references/registration-regimes.md sets out how to tell them apart and what to do in each case. If the user cannot find their apartment in the register, that is a finding in its own right and it is common, not an anomaly.

Step 1, establish how much the document proves

This is the question most guides skip entirely.

• For settled land (מקרקעין מוסדרים, land registered following settlement of title), registration is conclusive evidence of its content.
• For unsettled land (מקרקעין לא מוסדרים), registration is only prima facie evidence.

Say which one applies before you characterise anything on the page as established. If you cannot tell from what the user supplied, say so and tell them how to find out, rather than defaulting to the stronger reading.

Then note the extract's production date. An extract speaks as at the moment it was produced and nothing later appears on it, so an extract obtained weeks ago is a historical document.

Step 2, read the identity block

גוש, חלקה, and in a condominium תת-חלקה.

The trap here is that a sub-parcel number is not an apartment number. They coincide often enough to be dangerous and differ often enough to send a buyer the wrong neighbour's extract. Where the user is working from an apartment number alone, flag that the mapping needs confirming rather than assuming it.

The שטח is the registered area. It is not the marketed area, it is not the usable area, and it is computed on a basis that excludes some elements. A mismatch between the registered area and what an agent advertised is a question to raise, not a conclusion to draw.

Step 3, read the ownership block

For each registered owner, read the name, the identifying number, and the share as a fraction.

Check three things and report each as a question rather than a verdict:

• Do the fractions add up to the whole?
• Does every seller in the proposed transaction actually appear here?
• Is a deceased person still registered? If so, the estate has to be dealt with before anything transfers, which is a real and common blocker.

Where the registered owner is the State or a public land body and the resident appears as חוכר לדורות, that is a normal registered right, not a defect. A lease over five years is a חכירה and over twenty five years a חכירה לדורות.

Step 4, read the encumbrances, one type at a time

Do not summarise this block. Go entry by entry, name the type, and give the category meaning. references/entry-types.md carries each one in full. The short version:

Step 5, in a condominium, read the shares and the bylaws separately

The share in the common property attached to a unit is the ratio of its floor area to the total floor area of all units unless the bylaws say otherwise, computed in hundredths. This is why the fraction rarely matches an intuition about size, and it is not an error.

Registered bylaws bind anyone who later becomes an owner. So a parking space or storeroom a seller describes as "belonging to the apartment" belongs to it only if the registered position says so. Where the user is relying on a promise, tell them the register is what carries over.

Step 6, produce the output

Two blocks, in this order:

1. What is recorded, as a structured table the user can export: each entry with its type, its date, in whose favour it runs, and the category meaning.
2. What to ask about, as questions rather than conclusions: entries that condition dealings on a third party, a deceased registered owner, an area mismatch, an attachment, a ranked mortgage, or anything the user cannot account for.

Never output a verdict on the title. "Nothing here blocks the sale" and "the title is clean" are both outside this skill and both are the practice of law.

But a protective stop is not a verdict. Refusing to say "green" while also refusing to say "red" flattens a stop sign into an agenda item. Where the page shows a deceased or incapacitated registered owner, a note conditioning any dealing on a third party's consent, an attachment, or a caveat in favour of someone else, say plainly: do not transfer money before an advocate has looked at this entry. That is a caution about sequence, not an opinion on title.

Step 6b, what is NOT on this page, and where it lives

An extract is a register of RIGHTS. Say explicitly that it does not show: planning rights, building permits or building violations; municipal or building-committee debts; physical condition; a sitting tenant under an unregistered lease; or the price. The שטח is the registered area on its own basis.

Then point at where the missing risk actually sits, because a buyer who has read only this page has not done an encumbrance search:

The last row matters most: none of it is on the extract, and all of it gates registration. היטל השבחה in particular can be a five-figure liability whose allocation is negotiated before contract.

A mortgage the seller says will be discharged at closing. The mechanism, not the doctrine: obtain a מכתב כוונות from the mortgagee bank stating the exact payoff sum and the date it is valid to; pay that sum directly to the account named in the letter, never to the seller; then verify the discharge and the removal of the mortgage from the page on a fresh extract afterwards. Pair this with סעיף 86, since a redeemed rank can be refilled.

Step 7, when the property is not in the register

Do not treat this as an error. Establish which regime applies, using references/registration-regimes.md, and tell the user what document they should be holding instead and who issues it. A contract and a payment receipt are not a registered right, and a transaction is completed by registration, so the gap between the two is exactly what the user needs to understand.

Examples

A mortgage and a caveat on the same page

Explain the mortgage rank and the caveat separately: the caveat blocks a contradicting registration and protects its beneficiary against later attachment or insolvency, but it is not ownership and it does not discharge the mortgage. Then stop, and point out that whether this particular combination is safe for this particular deal is an advocate's question.

The area does not match the listing

The registered area is computed on its own basis and excludes some elements. Report the discrepancy, explain that the register's figure is the registered one, and treat the difference as something to ask about rather than as a misrepresentation you have identified.

A note conditioning dealings on someone's consent

Name the note, explain that any dealing is conditioned on that party's agreement, and tell the user to obtain the consent position in writing before relying on any timetable. This is usually a public land body, a housing company, or a bank.

"My apartment is not in the tabu"

Go to Step 7. Establish the regime, name the document that stands in place of an extract, and explain that a purchase contract does not itself constitute a registered right. Do not tell the user this is a problem with their ownership, and do not tell them it is fine.

Reference Links

For how to obtain an extract, its current fee, and the exact set of extract types offered today, send the user to the Land Registry's own service pages. Those pages could not be read first-hand when this skill was written, so this skill deliberately states no fee and no ordering procedure rather than repeating figures it could not verify.

Bundled Resources

Gotchas

• The extract is not always conclusive. It is conclusive evidence for settled land and only prima facie evidence otherwise. An agent that treats every extract as conclusive overstates the document.
• A sub-parcel number is not an apartment number. Assuming they match is the fastest way to read the wrong neighbour's extract and reason confidently about the wrong property.
• A caveat is not ownership. It blocks contradicting registrations and shields against later attachment or insolvency; it does not transfer anything, and a transaction is still completed only by registration.
• A discharged mortgage does not free its rank. A vacant rank can be refilled by a later mortgage where that mortgage's terms provide for it.
• Do not conclude that title is clean. Listing what is recorded is this skill's job; deciding what it means for a specific transaction is an advocate's.
• Not being in the register is common, not an anomaly. A very large share of Israeli homes sit in other regimes. Treating it as an emergency misleads the user as badly as ignoring it.
• The registered area is not the marketed area. Report the difference; do not characterise it.

Troubleshooting