How to Avoid Property Confiscation by the State in the Czech Republic

It sounds far-fetched, but it’s true. Yes, even today in the Czech Republic, your property can be confiscated by the state. And once that happens, it’s going to be very difficult to fix. It is therefore necessary to act in advance and ensure that your house or apartment has sufficiently identified owners.

A special situation

The Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters records precisely the insufficient identification of owners in the case of all 150,000 properties in the Czech Republic. That’s a huge amount. For those properties where this condition does not change, it will happen that they simply fall into the state administration.

The new Civil Code stipulates that this year is the last year when the real owners of these properties can apply for their rights. A detailed list is available on the office’s website, on the basis of which you can find out if something you don’t know belongs to you. For example, you could have inherited it from your ancestors, but for some reason you did not find out until now. In any case, it would be a shame to let such a property go to waste. There are a total of 147,000 plots of land and approximately 3,500 buildings.

What does it actually mean that the property has no identified owner? It is usually the case that no ownership rights are registered in the cadastre, or someone is listed at the property, but not identified sufficiently.

A mess in the cadastre

These situations usually did not arise in the last decades, but rather before 1989. At that time, the cadastre was not properly maintained and there were many errors. There were even periods when he didn’t manage at all. The various changes in these periods ended up in a vacuum. However, this does not mean that someone cannot claim these properties. But he must do so by the end of this year, otherwise he will be out of luck.

So you better find out if any of these properties do not belong to you. If that were the case, you could be in for a nice fortune. Today, land and houses are very expensive and can be well monetized.

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