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PHOTO:\u00a0Manege Square outside the Kremlin in Moscow. <\/span>ANTONOV\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n MOSCOW \u2014 Elena Kotova\u2019s one-room apartment on the outskirts of Moscow had started to feel cramped. Her son was almost 4 years old. She and her husband had solid jobs, she as an economist and he as a manager of a construction company. It was time to buy a new home.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just need the space,\u2019\u2019 she said. They found a two-bedroom apartment and secured a mortgage as well as a buyer for their former home. As closing day approached, the couple had one task to complete. Each would need a certificate of sanity from a psychologist.<\/p>\n \u201cThey will look at our psychological state,\u2019\u2019 she explained. \u201cIf everything is normal, they will give us the document.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Kotova, and tens of thousands of other Russians who are required to produce such a document to sell property, have no history of mental illness. The certificate, which must be signed and stamped by a doctor, is a legal defense against a pervasive problem in Moscow real estate deals: rampant fraud and weak courts.<\/p>\n This is the state of a real estate market plagued by \u201cblack realtors,\u2019\u2019 unscrupulous sales agents who use a variety of ploys to separate Muscovites from their money or property in the largest city in Europe. Russian media coined the phrase and described the agents as akin to criminals working a real estate black market, in a city where $29 billion in residential property is sold every year.<\/p>\n READ MORE VIA REALESTATE.BOSTON.COM<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n