Czech Land Registry Extract: Read Part C and the Plomba First

The seller says the flat is unencumbered. The register says a bank and a neighbour hold rights over it.

The Czech cadastre, katastr nemovitostí, is a public register under the Cadastral Act, zákon č. 256/2013 Sb.. Its extract, the list vlastnictví, runs from part A to part F: part C carries mortgages and easements, part D executions and insolvency notes, and a P marks a pending change. A certified extract costs 50 korunas.

What is in each part?

The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre, ČÚZK, publishes a sample extract that shows the layout. Part A names the owner or co-owners and their shares. Part B lists the properties on the sheet: parcels, buildings, flats. Part B1 holds the rights that serve those properties, for example a right of way over a neighbour's land. Part C holds the rights that burden them, with the related details. Part D holds notes and similar entries. Part E lists the acquisition titles, the deeds by which the current owner acquired each property. Part F relates agricultural parcels to their soil classification units, the BPEJ.

The sample also shows the phrase a buyer wants to see under C and D: bez zápisu, no entry.

Which entries in part C should stop you?

The ones the law lets in by registration. Section 11 of the Cadastral Act lists the rights that are entered by vklad, the constitutive registration: ownership, the right to build, easements, mortgages and future mortgages, sub-mortgages, pre-emption rights, a future výměnek, a reservation of title, a right of repurchase or resale, a prohibition on transfer or encumbrance, a reservation of a better buyer, among others. Each of these appears in the extract against the property it affects, and each one survives the sale unless it is discharged before or at completion.

Under section 10 of the act the legal effects of a registration run from the moment the application reached the cadastral office, not from the day the office processed it. A mortgage lodged this morning binds the flat this morning.

What does the letter P mean?

A change is under way. Section 9 of the act requires the cadastral office, by the next working day after it receives an application or another document for registration, to mark the affected properties as subject to a pending change. That mark is the plomba, printed as a P against the property. The same section gives everyone the right to inspect the list of delivered applications, and it orders registrations by the moment of delivery.

For a buyer the P is the most time-sensitive line on the sheet. It says that something, a transfer, a mortgage, an execution, has been filed and will take effect from its delivery moment even though the extract does not yet show what it is. The list of delivered applications tells you.

What sits in part D?

The entries that come from courts and bailiffs. Section 23 of the act lists the notes recorded against a property: an application to enforce a judgment by selling or administering the property, an execution order, a notice from an insolvency administrator that a property in the cadastre belongs to the debtor's estate, a preliminary injunction, an expropriation request, land consolidation proceedings, a lawsuit seeking a decision about the property, and other decisions that limit the owner's power to dispose of it. None of these is a right in the property, which is why they sit apart from part C, and every one of them can stop a transfer.

How do you get it, and what does it cost?

Two ways, one free. ČÚZK's online viewing application lets anyone look up a parcel, building or unit and read the current data without registering. A certified extract, the output most banks and lawyers ask for, is issued at any Czech POINT counter for 50 korunas per extract regardless of the number of pages, and the counter can search by house number or by parcel number.

We do not give buying advice. What the act and the office's own material support is this: the register is public, its part C shows the rights that will follow the flat to you, its part D shows the courts' and bailiffs' claims on it, and a P means the picture is changing as you read. AiMYNDi reads the výpis with the listing and the contract and flags the entries in your language. An example of what a report looks like shows the legal section, and buying a flat in Prague as a foreigner covers the steps around it.