You’ve got the contract of purchase, but still haven’t become the owner. You’re about to apply for registering your property at the Land Register. Common registration of property rights or easement usually doesn’t appear tricky, but there are a few basic rules you should know to make the process smooth. Let’s have a look at them.
There are three ways to modify the Land Register: Making an entry, a record or a note. According to current law, all property rights are registered by making an entry in the Land Register. The most common property rights include:
Signing a contract of property purchase isn’t enough by itself. You must register the constitution, modification or termination of a property right. A particular branch of the Land Register in charge must then authorize your entry to complete the whole process.
The contract of purchase should specify which party will apply for registering the property and also which party will pay the application fee. Both the seller and the buyer may become the proposer, i.e. the person signing the registration application. Even the signature of one of the parties suffices! The parties can also be represented when registering the property, for example by the solicitor who drafted the contract of purchase and kept the purchasing money safe in their custody. However, the representative doesn’t become a member of the procedure, they are listed in a special form box. The signature on the procuration must be attested by a notary.
Tip: We recommend the signature of both parties for verification purposes, but one petitioner is enough and his signature does not have to be officially verified.
Knowledge is essential. That’s why we’ve written a Guide to Reading the Land Register.
You can only apply for commencing the registration procedure by filling out the proper form, either online or on paper which you can send by post or hand in personally. The online Land Register application can save you some time by automatically reading the required data from the Register. However, you can only complete the online application if you have converted the attachments.
Tip: Do you need an extract from the Land Register? Check out our guide.
You’ll need to chart such property into the cadastre map. Your local Land Register branch will require:
The application fee is 2 000 crowns (newly from 1st Jan 2020, it used to cost 1 000). You can pay it in person at your local Land Register branch, in cash or by card. Or if you’re sending the application by post, you can purchase and enclose a fee stamp. All the administration fee rates are listed at the Land Register web pages.
As we mentioned before, there is an interactive form available that will automatically fill in some data when you enter the title number or specify a particular property.
Still, you need to make sure the application contains each and every necessity in a proper way. For instance, when transferring a flat defined by stale-dated law, you also need to transfer the part-owned shares of other real estate (the parcel on which the house stands or the adjoining landed property) that go with it. These shares must be listed both in the contract of purchase or deed of donation and in the application. If you neglect this, the Land Register will reject your application. You’ll have to withdraw and correct it and then reapply, which will cost you another 2 000 crowns for the fee.
When the Land Register accepts your application, their office informs both contract parties and marks the property with a seal. That means changes are taking place in the title number. The entry is made no sooner than 20 days from the acceptance of the application, usually within a month.
Tip: The process can’t be sped up, as both contract parties must be allowed 20 days to submit eventual protests against the registration.
When the 20-day term expires and the entry is approved, the property is officially registered at the Land Register.
The Land Register marks the property with a seal no later than one workday after accepting the proposal to change ownership rights. The seal renders any and all changes impossible, lasts for the whole procedure term and is removed by the Land Register after the entry is made or after the procedure has been put on hold or rejected.
Buyers are advised to check if the desired property isn’t already marked with the seal – if it is, the seller may be trying to cheat them. The seal also works as a safeguard for owners and may signal that something is amiss. If somebody tries to forge the transfer of your ownership rights, you must defend yourself within the 20 days by filing a protest with the Land Register.
The Land Register will then examine the transfer application from these three angles required by law:
It’s good to bear in mind that the Land Register always assesses the situation at the time of filing the application and that it won’t consider any documents with a later date on them.
Accessible Solicitor advises: To become safer, the Land Register introduced the Change Tracking application in 2014. For the annual fee of 200 crowns, it’ll automatically notify you about any attempted changes in your property via a selected information channel.
Within 48 hours, we’ll draft a flawless contract of purchase for you. Moreover, we’ll apply for the registration of the property on your behalf. We guarantee that everything will proceed with no difficulties.
It’s not unusual for errors to appear in the application. The Land Register then can’t proceed with the transfer. If the error is removable (usually typos, unattested signatures, due administration fees and so on), it can be remedied within the time period given by the Register. If it’s irremovable (for instance insufficient or faulty specification of the property or proposed rights), the Register will reject your application. Unfortunately, this occurs quite often. It takes as little as to give a wrong parcel number or misspell one of the contract parties. Once we’ve been dealing with a case where the signature read “Zdenka” instead of “Zdeňka”. But in the end we managed to overturn the situation to the client’s benefit and successfully conclude the proceedings.
Tip: Consulting the Land Register won’t reveal everything. We’ll advise you what else to look out for.
Don’t panic if the Register decides that your application contains irremovable errors. The fastest and most reasonable thing to do is to withdraw your proposal to make an entry in the Register (your application).
There is no special form for this but bear in mind that you can’t withdraw it without:
Tip: Would you like to speed up the process? Add that all members are disclaiming their right to appeal.
The withdrawal application then needs to be signed by all members and subsequently sent or personally delivered to the Land Register’s filing room. This comes without any administration fees. Then another procedure commences:
If you don’t withdraw your application, the Register will hand their rejection over to the court in case you want to bring an action against their decision, and a 30-day term starts running. That considerably slows down the whole process. Therefore, we advise you to be thorough about the formalities and to check your mailbox regularly.
Do you want the whole process to run smoothly? You can contact us online and within 48 hours, we will provide you with complete professional legal service connected with the purchase or selling of real estate including a flawless application for registering your property.
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Ondřej is the attorney who came up with the idea of providing legal services online. He's been earning his living through legal services for more than 10 years. He especially likes to help clients who may have given up hope in solving their legal issues at work, for example with real estate transfers or copyright licenses.
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