When you signed the deed of purchase, the notaire explained to you that the deed of sale is “published in the mortgage registry” and you would have to wait several months before receiving the certificate of title and the permanent record of the transaction. Why such a long wait? It’s important to remember that the notaire must deal with as many formalities after the deed has been signed as before. During your meeting, you probably noticed that the notaire had compiled an enormous amount of information even before the sale took place. He or she had been in contact with the civil registry office, zoning authorities, the cadastral agency, mortgage lenders and the seller’s bank. In fact, a notaire will compile a complete dossier before any property asset (a flat, a house or a plot of land) is sold, regardless of the size of the transaction. Your notaire calls this phase the “preliminary formalities”. Once the deed of sale has been signed, there are more tasks to be completed – the “post-sale formalities”. The most important is registering the sale at the mortgage registry. This is when the deed is published in the land register and the notaire submits the fees and taxes paid by the purchaser when the deed is signed (incorrectly known as “notaire’s fees”) to the tax authorities. In addition, the notaire provides copies and abstracts of the deed of sale to various public agencies (the cadastral authorities, the mortgage registrar). One copy in particular, known as the “certified copy” and signed by the notaire, will be returned to his or her office duly stamped by the tax authorities. This document is your certificate of title. Don’t forget that the notaire will keep the original copy of the certificate in his or her offices for one hundred years, at which time it will be turned over to the archives of the territorial department. The notaire must comply with some strict requirements when performing these tasks after the sale. The certificates that he or she prepares are added to a queue at each relevant government agency. These agencies process millions of certificates every year, and each one is rigorously inspected. Fairly long delays are inevitable. But the notaire will always submit each document to the various agencies no more than two months after the deed of sale was signed. Once the certified copy of your certificate of deed, complete with the official stamps of approval, has been returned to your notaire, he or she will take care of some remaining accounting transactions and close the file on your purchase. If you paid too much when the certificate was signed, the remaining balance will be sent to you along with a statement of your account and the certificate of title. If you still owe money, the notaire will ask for the remainder. In general, you’ll receive the certificate of title about three to six months after you signed the deed of sale. Don’t hesitate to ask your notaire. He or she can tell you approximately when you’ll receive your certificate of title.