From 2014 to the end of last year, the Office for State Representation in Property Matters (ÚZSVM) determined the owner in 65,519 cases for properties for which the owner was previously unclear. For 107,824 properties, the owner could not be found in ten years, so they passed into the ownership of the state according to the law, announced the Czech property office.
In 2023 alone, the owners of 14,710 properties were identified, a record number and roughly double the number in 2022. In three-fifths of the cases, the search for the owners resulted in inheritance proceedings because it turned out that the owner of the property was no longer alive.
At the beginning of February, 107,824 properties with unidentified owners were registered by the Office of the Land Registry. Of these, 638 were buildings and the rest were land. The largest number of properties for which the owner could not be found was in the South Moravian Region, where the ÚZSVM registered 31,821 properties, followed by the Central Bohemia Region with 22,283 properties. The smallest number, 29, was recorded by the Property Office in the Karlovy Vary Region.
According to the law, the ÚZSVM reported the properties for which the owners could not be identified to itself as of 1 February. Subsequently, it will offer them to other state institutions; according to an earlier government decision, about 70,000 properties should be transferred to the State Land Office and about 6,000 to the Forestry Service of the Czech Republic. If state institutions do not show interest in the property, the property office will look for other owners.
The task of the ÚZSVM is to represent the Czech Republic in legal disputes concerning state property. The office thus acts primarily before courts and arbitration bodies instead of other organisational units of the state. The ÚZSVM also acts in legal disputes concerning property it manages itself.
Source: ÚZSVM and CTK
