Tereza Novakova

Czech sellers coming from a German or Austrian frame of reference expect a notary to run the whole transaction. The Czech Republic does not work that way. There is no compulsory notarization here, which sounds like a relief until the responsibility for getting the contract and the cadastre application right lands squarely on the seller. That gap is the first thing a private seller has to plan around.

The recurring issue is timing. A signed contract changes nothing on its own. Ownership moves only when the cadastre records the vklad, and the office observes a statutory waiting period before it does. In between, the money has to live somewhere safe. Escrow, an attorney to draft the paperwork, and signatures verified at a post office counter are none of them glamorous, but together they are the difference between a clean sale and a rejected application that sends the parties back to the start of the queue.

The tax picture is not as simple as it first looks. Transfer tax is gone, true. But the income tax exemptions, the ten-year holding test, the two-year residence test, and the rule on reinvesting proceeds are all worth checking against the actual dates of a given sale before signing anything. Where a figure or a rule turns on the specifics, the safer course is to confirm it with a Czech adviser rather than assume.