Poland

Legal and tax aspects of
investing in real estate
Land and mortgage registers are publicly
available for review by anybody (even those
with no legal interest) and may be also
reviewed on-line, via IT system.
As far as land and mortgage register files
(including maps, deeds, court decisions)
are concerned, only parties with a legal
interest may inspect them. Legal interest is
interpreted quite narrowly and comes down
to those parties whose rights are registered
in a given register.
Entry of a right in the land and mortgage
register is presumed to reflect the actual
legal status of the real estate. Should
there be any inconsistency between the
legal status of real estate, the content of
the register prevails in favor of the person
who has acquired the right of ownership
or another property right by performing
an act in law with a person duly registered
as the holder of the right and entitled
according to the public credibility warranty
of the land and mortgage register (rękojmia
wiary publicznej ksiąg wieczystych). In
consequence, if a purchaser acquires a
property in good faith from a non-owner
registered as owner, the acquisition is
valid and the true owner cannot render
the transfer invalid. His only recourse is
an indemnity claim against the vendor. In
consequence, an excerpt from the land and
mortgage register is the key document that
should be obtained and analyzed before a
decision to acquire real estate is made.
The public credibility warranty does not
confer protection on gratuitous dispositions
or those made in favor of the acquirer in
bad faith. It is also excluded by an entry in
the land and mortgage register concerning
e.g. filing an application or lodging a
complaint against a court decision.
Land and Buildings Register
The land and buildings register is kept by
starostas of the poviats (or presidents of
towns with the rights of a poviat) and is a
uniform collection for the whole country
of systematized, updated data on land,
buildings and premises, their owners and
other natural persons and corporate bodies
holding the land, buildings and premises.
Information on land, buildings and premises
is available to the public and commonly
accessible. However, fees are collected
for disseminated data sets and distributed
extracts from the registers and directories
as well as for copies of cadastral maps.
Additionally, the party intending to inspect
the register should prove his/her legal
interest if the demanded extract includes
personal data. The public credibility
warranty does not apply to the land and
buildings register, hence, the register does
not provide the person acquiring the right
of ownership or another real property right
with the protection which is provided in the
case of land and mortgage registers held by
courts.
Poland. The real state of real estate | 63