Tabu

Tabu (Hebrew: טאבו — derived from the Ottoman-era Turkish term "tapu") is the Israeli land-registry system administered by the Israel Ministry of Justice. Tabu operates as the central registry of Israeli land ownership, mortgages, liens, and the broader Israeli real-property recording architecture.

Operationally, Tabu registration is required for legal completion of Israeli real-estate transactions. Title transfer between buyer and seller is not legally complete until Tabu registration is executed. The Tabu registration process operates through regional Tabu offices, with substantial digitization of the system through the 2010s and 2020s expanding the operational accessibility of registration.

Beyond ownership recording, Tabu records mortgages (the principal Israeli mortgage architecture operates through Tabu-registered mortgages over the underlying real property), liens, and the broader real-property encumbrance structure.

Tabu records are substantially publicly accessible, with title-search capability available through the Ministry of Justice's online infrastructure. The data underpins the property-data services covered in The Olam's Real Estate cluster.

For foreign-buyer transactions in particular, Tabu registration of the title transfer interacts with the Mas Rechisha purchase-tax administration, the Israeli banking architecture for funds transfer, and the broader transaction architecture supporting cross-border Israeli real-estate acquisition.

See also: /glossary/mas-rechisha/, /glossary/ila/, /real-estate/tel-aviv-trophy-market/