It started in 2014, when a new cadastral law was approved. He ordered the State Representative Office on Property Issues (ÚZSVM) to try to find the true owners of more than 200,000 parcels of land and real estate.

“Since then, we have successfully completed more than 50,000 cases. Given that this is a very professional and time-consuming activity, this is a great result. We continue to focus on real estate, which complicates the development of cities and towns , for example, when building necessary infrastructure,” said General Director of ÚZSVM Kateřina Arajmu.

The most common outcome of an investigation is the filing of an initiative to initiate the inheritance process, because the owner is no longer alive. “That’s more than 63 percent of cases,” Arajmu added.

As of February 1, 2023, a total of 342,952 items with inadequately identified or unknown owners and a total of 121,423 inadequately identified persons were registered in the real estate cadastral. One property can be jointly owned by several less-identified owners, and that one owner can own several different properties.

“In real terms, there were 150,559 properties that did not have properly registered owners. Of these, 147,004 were plots of land. This was mainly arable land, 43 percent of which was also pasture and forest patches, but also hops and fruit farms. orchards, vineyards or parks. There are also 3,555 buildings that do not have properly registered owners, mainly garages or agricultural buildings and guest houses,” said ÚZSVM spokeswoman Michaela Tesařová.

He added, this year in accordance with the Civil Code, the last year property owners can apply for their rights. “Therefore, I recommend that everyone take a look inside list and check whether the property they don’t know about belongs to their ancestors or to themselves,” adds Tesařová.

If the property owner does not register by December 31, 2023, the property will switch to the state. “After this date, any claim to ownership of the property must be proven by a final court decision,” explains Tesařová.

A war hero’s mansion and a stranger’s new apartment

The office is required by law to submit real estate records with ambiguous owners to the municipal office in the county where the real estate is located. The municipal office will then publish the data on the official board.

“If the office finds the owner of the property, it will invite him in writing to submit documents proving his ownership to the relevant cadastral office or confirming his ownership rights in civil proceedings. If a person claiming to be the owner of the property applies, he must provide documents proving his ownership to the cadastral office or to exercise its proprietary rights in civil proceedings,” written on the ÚZSVM website.

Spokesperson Michaela Tesařová detailed several traced property owner cases recently resolved. For example, a search was carried out for the owner of a thousand-square-meter plot of Liběšická and Podohradská streets in Prague, on which there is a city street.

“The office, in collaboration with the National Archives and the Central Population Register, found that the last unknown owner lived in Králové Dvór and died in 1954. Based on these findings, the office put forward an initiative to discuss additional inheritance. The court approached all possible heirs, but they left their legacy. The land then became the property of the state. It transferred it to the property of the capital city of Prague free of charge,” the spokesperson said.

The case of an unknown farm owner in Rohatec is also interesting. The office eventually discovered that the co-owner was a Czechoslovak hero who served in the Air Force in Canada during the Second World War. The Rohatecký native died in 1942 in service with the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he served as a mechanic and attained the rank of sergeant. The inheritance process is currently underway.

Recently, surprisingly, an apartment unit in a new development of the Farské lúky resort in Čeladná was added to the list of owners who were not adequately identified. The office found that the purchase contract was from October 2009. Through remote access to real estate cadastral data, the contract was traced from the document pool and thanks to that, it was possible to identify the owner, who was a foreigner. National. Incorrect entry in the cadastral has been fixed.