Szeged

Before buying a property in Hungary, you should check for currently listed owners/tenants of the potential property - Check if any previous owners or tenants are still listed on the property. A lawyer, via the land registry, might only see or might only be allowed to see that the property can be sold but not necessarily if it still has existing tenants associated with it. You might think the current owner gets taken off the property list (address card voided for the property) once you have bought the property from them, but it is actually the current owner's job to take them off your new property once they have sold it to you. Some people have a temporary address too whereby they use one to avoid the debt collection agencies!

I had this situation: The previous previous owner was in debt by around £540 (around 200,000 Ft), which is a big debt for a Hungarian, whereby their electricity was cut off, their gas was cut off and in the end they were forced to sell the property via an auction. The LTD company who bought it and eventually sold it to me via an estate agent had no idea the previous owner had not removed themselves from the property and therefore from their address card. I only found out about this situation when I started receiving debt collector letters in the name of the previous previous owner about 18 months after purchasing the property. So if the LTD company had the property on the market for a while, the debts probably started a few years earlier?

Either way, I had a long drawn out process of going to the local council to resolve the issue (to get the previous previous owner unlisted from my property). I also contacted the debt collectors to explain the situation, to no avail....until they checked with the land registry and local council that the previous previous owner was to have their name unlisted. The local council asked the police to investigate the previous previous owner's last known addresses (permanent and temporary) whereby the police had a third address for them!! Anyway, through police and local council investigations and them writing numerous letters to the previous previous owner to defend their right to keep a permanent address at my property, the local council wrote me a nice letter explaining the previous previous owner could not be found in person (and that their recorded letters had bounced) and therefore would have their name unlisted from my property. As said, I would of thought the previous previous owner's name would of automatically been removed.

NOTE: I was also getting letters and personal visits from the tax man, among other people, regarding this case. Since having the 'letter of evidence that nobody by that name lives here' though, I get no more visits or letters from debt collectors and so on.

FenTiger

Thanks for posting this warning. I've yet to purchase a property in Hungary. My wife's first husband in UK left her with debts. It was a nightmare so I understand what you went through. Had to put ownly my name on our house to keep the bailiffs away. Surprisingly the first husband is back in UK having emigrated to USA but it's been impossible to trace his address to pass on the information or collect what's owed to my wife!

lulu122

thanks for the info here, what's the best way to find out if such person is still listed on the property?

Szeged

In my case, I went to the Szeged Government Offices (Kormányhivatal Megyei), and more precisely to the District Offices (Járásihivatal), which are the equivalent to UK local council offices (i.e. the local Town Hall).

Szeged

If you visit your government offices to have a name removed from your property (and therefore from the land registry records), I would suggest taking your Passport and proof of Hungarian address (Address Card and Title Deeds) with you. And the application form ("person removal form") they give you to fill out, in front of them or to take home and return, will require two witness signatures (with their ID/Address details mentioned) as that form is declaring you acknowledge the person to be removed from the land registry records (your property) no longer lives at your property. They said it could take up to five months to finish the process, but in my case it only took around two months; which was quite good because it was done over the Christmas season/holidays.

Peter_in_Hungary

There is a level of confusion creeping in here. Land registry do not keep a list of who lives at which property. What is in Land registry are the deeds of the property which contain the current and past owners, in what %age that ownership is in and how the ownership was acquired (purchase, gift etc.). The fact that only your name is listed on the deeds as the 100% current owner does not mean that someone else may not be registered at that address at the local council/government offices.

Of course once you have removed someone who used to be listed at your address this will not necessarily end the matter because you don't know how many people have your address in there files so Christmas cards and bailiffs may arrive for some time.

Szeged

Yes, you are correct Peter!

I meant to say in my last post that the local government offices will be the ones to contact the Documents Office to have the previous owners/tenants/etc addresses removed (their address cards voided for example), depending on who you have requested to be removed of course (of which they can dispute the removal - i.e. within 15 days), based on the local government offices' investigations; which may mean checks with the land registry.

You need to visit the government offices first because going directly to the Documents Office will get you nowhere. You have to fill in the application form issued by the Government Offices first, so they can investigate the problem. They have the power of communication/investigation by contacting the other authorities on your behalf in other words.