Armenia’s government approves bill on a unified address register: about 1.5 million addresses standardised
Armenia’s government at its 12 November session approved draft amendments to the Law on State Registration of Rights to Property that revise how real estate is addressed and establish a unified electronic address register. Head of the Cadastre Committee Suren Tovmasyan said about 1.5 million addresses have already been standardised and entered into the electronic system.
Under the bill, an address is considered assigned or changed from the moment it is entered in the address register, and the separate administrative function of registering an address is abolished. The national address standard has been in force since 1 January 2025; on its basis, addressing decisions accumulated at the Cadastre Committee over the years have been brought into one system. When property is registered, the address is no longer typed in manually but selected from the electronic register.
The change affects property owners and buyers, developers, communities, and services that rely on addresses: ambulance, rescue, taxi and delivery services. Suren Tovmasyan said citizens will no longer have to correct identified errors one by one at the community: the Cadastre Committee will send them to the community in a single letter, and if it does not respond within the period set by law, the committee’s proposals will be taken as the basis. According to the bill’s rationale, addressing already registered property or changing its address is free of charge; for Yerevan this applies only to property addressed after the city obtained community status.
The national geoportal will be the source of address information, with changes reflected immediately. The head of the Cadastre Committee said access to the data for service providers is planned to be paid, for a “not so large” fee; Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan, who chaired the session, said the question of paid versus free access would still be discussed. Tovmasyan said taxi services and suppliers currently maintain their own address databases that are not synchronised with the state one, so a street renaming appears in them days or months later.
Mher Grigoryan called the bill important but said it is “still 20 percent of the job”. He said that if citizens and service providers are not properly informed of address changes, an ambulance or a taxi will go to the old address and the risk of congestion will grow. The deputy prime minister also raised a single standard for address plates on buildings, the naming of public transport stops, and mailboxes.
Armenia’s Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan said the ambulance service has built its databases from various sources and the aim is for changes to be reflected in them automatically. She also pointed to duplicate street names in different cities. President of the Statistical Committee of Armenia Stepan Mnatsakanyan said the next step is to integrate the address register with the population register and the business register.
In practice, owners and companies should bear in mind that an address may change at the initiative of the Cadastre Committee and the community: under the bill, right holders are notified through the “Personal Office” section of the state real estate register’s website. Suren Tovmasyan took the deputy prime minister’s remarks as an instruction and promised proposals on notification and the plate standard; the Ministry of High-Tech Industry and Artificial Intelligence and the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure will join the work. Under the bill, the law takes effect two months after official publication, and existing addresses will be transferred to the register within three years. The rationale notes that the bill may somewhat reduce community budget revenues.
BusinessDaily.am reported on 2 November on a draft put up for public discussion that sets rules for maintaining the unified address database while preserving the history of previous addresses.
