Nature of Forward Sale Contract of Construction in the Law of Iran and the Shiite Jurisprudence

With the growth of population in big cities, housing is considered as an essential need of human beings. Individuals professionally and occasionally as legal persons are involved in construction of buildings. Thus transactions concerning housing prevailed among people. The most significant of these transactions is forward sale of the buildings. In this kind of contract, the forward seller undertakes to construct and deliver a building according to the terms of the contract and in a specified time in return for a price paid in installments. This kind of contract is not dealt with in jurisprudence independently, but experts in law have discussed it to some extent. This contract in some cases is not included in any specified category of contracts and is included in the title of private contracts under article 10 of the Civil Code. According to the principle of voluntarism, freedom of contracts, and article 10 of the Civil Code, this contract is valid and binding. Some experts in law have placed this contract under other titles such as obligation towards sale under article 10 of the Civil Code termed as informal provisional agreement among common people. Concluding this contract as a suspended one in which ownership depends on its existence is also permissible according to the Iranian legal system. The present article is to discover the nature of this contract and compare it to different contracts whether definite or indefinite.