From reservation to registration of the owner: how the documents in a property deal should follow on from one another

An ordinary sale of a flat through an estate agency passes through five documents: the reservation agreement, sometimes an agreement on a future sale agreement, the sale agreement, the agreement on escrow of the purchase price and the registration application; if the buyer is financing the purchase with a mortgage, the bank’s lien agreement is added. The reservation is prepared by the agency, the loan documentation by the bank, the sale agreement by a lawyer. The Land Register, meanwhile, assesses the sale agreement and the registration application, yet errors may reach them from earlier documents that no one opens again.

The data are entered once and thereafter only carried over

The Cadastral Act imposes a decisive requirement on the agreement:

An agreement, a public instrument or another instrument drawn up in writing in the state language, in the Czech language or in an officially certified translation, free of errors in writing and in calculation and of other obvious inaccuracies, is capable of effecting the registration of a right to real property in the Land Register.

— Section 42(1) of Act No. 162/1995 Coll. (unofficial English translation)

The agreement must identify the parties (in the case of a natural person, the given name, surname, birth surname, date of birth, birth number and permanent residence), the legal act and the property according to the Land Register data (Section 42(2)). The most reliable course is to compile these data once, at the reservation stage, from a current title deed and from identity documents, and to carry them over into every subsequent document in identical wording. A typing error in a parcel number or in the share of the common parts of the building, which arises in the reservation and is copied into the sale agreement, is awkward to correct once the registration application has been filed. Some relief is provided by Section 42(6): a discrepancy between the data in the agreement and the data in the reference register does not prevent registration, and where there is no doubt as to the identity of the person, the authority records the data according to the reference register. When drafting the agreement, however, do not rely on that safeguard.

The reservation should also determine what is to be carried over into the sale agreement as its content: the price, the dates, the method of financing and what stays in the property. If the reservation is to bind both parties to conclude the sale agreement, it must say so expressly; the difference is explained in the article a reservation agreement or an agreement on a future contract.

What the Land Register reviews, and how quickly

In the case of an ordinary agreement, the district office examines the essential elements, the form, the transferor’s entitlement to dispose of the property, the certainty of the declarations of intent and conformity with the law and with good morals (Section 31(1)), and decides within 30 days (Section 32(1)). If the agreement has been authorised by a lawyer or drawn up in the form of a notarial deed, the authority assesses it only in terms of conformity with the cadastral record and the procedural conditions (Section 31(2)) and, if everything is in order, decides within 20 days (Section 32(2)). With an authorised agreement, certification of the transferor’s signature is not required either (Section 42(3)). We examine the difference between authorisation and the revision of someone else’s agreement in the article revision or authorisation of a sale agreement, and the running of the time limits in the question how long registration in the Land Register takes.

The money must follow the registration

The purchase price, the escrow and the registration must be set up along a single axis: the buyer pays into escrow, the seller receives the money only after registration has been allowed, and the escrow agreement adopts the payment conditions from the sale agreement verbatim. If the reservation fee is to be set off against the purchase price, the sale agreement should state how much the buyer has already paid and to whom, and what part remains to be paid, otherwise the figures in the sale agreement, in the escrow and in the loan documentation will diverge. If part of the price is paid by the buyer’s bank, a lien agreement is added and with it the question of priority. The Land Register records rights to the same property in the order in which the instruments were delivered to it (Section 41(2)), so it must be agreed in advance who will file the registration application for the sale agreement and for the bank’s lien agreement, and when. The details are examined in the article on the payment terms of a sale agreement, the article on lawyer escrow and the question why the buyer’s bank requires the seller’s signature on the lien agreement.

When the Land Register stays the proceedings

If the application or its annexes are defective, the district office calls on the party to remedy them and stays the proceedings (Section 31a(c)). If the defects are not remedied within the period set, the proceedings are discontinued (Section 31b(1)(f)). Errors in writing or in calculation and other obvious inaccuracies in the agreement may, once the application has been filed, be corrected only by an amendment to the agreement (Section 42(4)), that is with the signatures of both parties; the procedure is described in the question correcting an error in the agreement after filing the application. The proceedings are also discontinued if a party withdraws from the agreement before the decision (Section 31b(1)(b)). Which provisions on cooperation, powers of attorney and the procedure on refusal belong in the sale agreement for these situations is examined in the article when the Land Register stays or refuses registration.

How this will work under the new Civil Code

On 1 October 2026, the National Council of the Slovak Republic approved the new Slovak Civil Code, which will take effect on 1 July 2027. The new code does not change the Cadastral Act, so the requirements for the agreement under § 42, the time limits for a decision and priority according to the delivery of instruments will remain. Although the new code will provide that an error in writing does not render the agreement invalid if its meaning is beyond doubt, once the application has been filed it will still have to be corrected by an amendment. Instead of “vklad” (registration), it will speak of “zápis” (entry) in the Land Register. For the chain of documents, the following will change:

• Check the title deed again before filing the application. A person who acquires real property for value and in good faith from the registered owner will be protected even if the entry does not reflect reality. Good faith will, however, be assessed as at the day the application for entry is filed, not as at the day of the reservation.
• Escrow will remain the foundation. Withdrawal from the agreement will no longer restore ownership; after entry, the seller will be left only with a claim for transfer back.
• The handover report will gain weight. The risk of damage will pass to the buyer on taking over the property, not on entry, unless the agreement provides otherwise.

If the chain extends beyond 1 July 2027, individual documents will be governed by different law. A reservation and an agreement on a future contract signed by 30 June 2027 will remain under the existing regime, while a sale agreement concluded later will already be subject to the new code. A bank’s lien created by 30 June 2027 will be assessed under the existing legislation until it ceases to exist; for a lien agreement signed earlier and registered later, however, it is not certain which regime will apply.

If you are making a reservation now and will sign the sale agreement from 1 July 2027, prepare its wording in the annex to the reservation according to the new rules and, with the lien agreement, also allow for the possibility that the lien may arise only after the change in the legislation.

Status as of 22 October 2026: the act has been approved and was signed by the President on 20 October 2026, but has not yet been promulgated in the Collection of Laws. Until 30 June 2027, the rules described above in this article apply.

How we can help

For estate agencies we supply the whole chain of documents for a particular deal, from the reservation through the sale agreement and the escrow to the registration application, with consistent data in each of them, as part of our preparation of agreements and registration applications service. If you have the agreement ready and only need it filed and the proceedings monitored, see our registration application with the Land Register service.