Hungary: Purchase of real estate

Natural person citizens of and companies incorporated in EU and EEA countries may acquire ownership title to non-agricultural and non-forest real estate without a special permit. Persons other than those mentioned before may purchase any kind of real estate with a special permit only. Obtaining title of ownership of agricultural and forest real estate is subject to further restrictions (e.g., a resident natural person and a national of a Member State who is not a farmer, may acquire ownership of land if the area of the land does not exceed 1 hectare). The procedure of obtaining title of ownership of agricultural and forest real estate differs from the acquisition procedure of general real estate.

The legal part of the acquisition of a general real estate starts with signing the purchase agreement which must be countersigned by an attorney. The signed and countersigned document then must be submitted to the land registry, the sooner the better as filing the document with the title of ownership registration request constitutes a protection for the purchaser, since any later requests for registration of rights or facts on the same property will be ranked behind the earlier purchase agreement. The seller may request the land registry to not register the title pending the payment of the whole purchase price. In this case, the request will hold its original place and will be ranked before those requests that were filed later. This solution can guarantee that the registration permit signed by the seller only takes effect, thus the title of ownership of the purchaser is registered only after the purchase price is fully paid and the seller gave the permission to end the pending period and proceed with registration. Such pending duration may last up to 6 months which may be prolonged upon a new request.

Two or more persons may be owners of the same real property by specific shares. Joint ownership does not mean that the real property is either physically or legally divided, although the joint owners may agree on the division of the use of the property.