A Swedish woman had to face the fact she's not the real owner of her apartment in Váci utca 13 years after she bought the property for HUF 53 million. If you bought your apartment at the end of the 1990s or at the beginning of the 2000s, and don't like unpleasant surprises, it's recommended to check at the land registry if you are the official owner of your property.
A Swedish woman bought an apartment in Váci utca in 2000 for HUF 53 million, and she also paid the HUF 1.5-million tax. 13 years after, one day she was told her apartment would be auctioned, because the owner was in debt. It was revealed that 13 years ago the woman's claim to register her as the new owner was declined, but she was not informed about this fact. A Hungarian buyer had a similar case. He bought his apartment in 1996, and the registry of the new owner still hasn't been realized. This fact was revealed when one of the public utilities initiated a lawsuit against the house. Other similar cases can exist, so everyone who bought their apartment at the end of the 1990s or at the beginning of the 2000s should check at the land registry if they are the official owners of their property to avoid having such problems in the future.
Land Registries Are Behind with Their Work
The cause of the cases is the fact the land registries had way too much work when these transactions were realized, thus they couldn't register the new owners. This job was gotten by land registries in 1972; before that courts had it. When it was transferred to land registries, they had to face with 70 thousand unfinished cases. Later, after the end of communism in 1989, a huge number of sells were realized, so the land registries had a lot of work again, which they couldn't keep up with. In 1998 the number of the unfinished cases was more than 670 thousand; and in 2008 more than 200 thousand. Fortunately we can find out easily if we are the official owners of our property, and we can be informed about any changes of the ownership via email or text message.
Source:index.hu
