Your guaranty: investing in a real estate in Austria

  • 05/18/2015
  • Created by Thomas Wührer
Grundbuch

Austria as well as Germany and Switzerland, is one of the few European countries where you can be sure to 100%, when investing in a real estate. The Austrian land charge register is a guarantee therefore, because it provides detailed information about the entire ownership structure of the desired property.

Austria: Chronicle land charge register since the 18th century

In 1770 Maria Theresa, Austria’s ruling Archduchess and Queen of Hungary already started to create general and comprehensive directories of houses in Austria. From 1870 to 1992, the land registers were held in paper form, but taken step by step in a land database since 1980. Since 7.5.2012 you can find all Austrian properties standardised in an online real estate database (cf.: www.wikipedia.org).

Safety Warranty: up-to-date, public directory of all Austrian real estates

The Austrian land charge register is a current, official and public register of all landed properties in Austria. In the land charge register the ownership of all properties and the debts thereon or rights connected with the ownership are listed and legally documented (e.g. property ownership, residential property, lien law, building law, and many more).

In principle, everybody can have a look into the Austrian land charge register, by payment of a small fee. Basic book excerpts, excerpts or copies of maps of each card can be queried by entering the cadastral municipality name and register number, or parcel number. On request, it can be referred to deleted data as well (older data are only available in paper form).

You can trust in the Austrian land charge register

In Austria everybody can rely on the accuracy and completeness of the Austrian land charge register. You just can purchase the respective rights or obligations with an entry in the land charge register. This means, you can certainly rely on all the entries in the Austrian land charge register for 100%. Your security is guaranteed!

Problems in real estate financing abroad:

Often when buying real estates abroad, serious problems may occur. Especially in the southern parts of Europe (Greece, Croatia , Serbia, etc.), in Russia and the CIS states, there are areas which are not or not yet fully developed in the respective land charge register. Often this is due to the fact, that in these regions the chronicle of information on land, such as ownership, and many more, was not performed properly until now. There is a variety of properties, which are not covered by a country-specific land charge register.

More information about the land charge registry offices of the European Union Member States you will get here.

We just want to note, that the cross-border financing in real estates may sometimes pose significant problems.
Be always on the safe side, when investing in a real estate abroad!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

 

Back