The cancellation of the 4 percent real estate tax that the Czech government approved at the end of April has unlocked the residential market. Agents across the country noticed the difference immediately, which isn’t surprising, since the tax was paid by the buyer of any piece of real estate. Finance Minister Alena Schillerová announced her plans to get rid of the tax at the end of March, a statement that immediately killed the market, since buyers knew they had a chance to save hundreds of thousands of koruna by simply waiting for approval.
It’s taken far longer than expected, and the bill still has to be passed in parliament, but this is being seen as a certainty. It will include all transactions beginning from December 2019 and anyone who already paid the tax on apartments bought since that time will be able to apply to receive their money back. “Cancellation of the real estate tax is a welcome step as it had long been seen as useless, or rather an unfair tax,” the developer Roman Weiser (Bidli) told the daily Mlada fronta Dnes.
“It’s too early for now to evaluate the impact of the cancellation of the tax on the overall market,” said Maxima Reality’s director Vladimir Zuzak. “But I can confirm that in the first wave, we saw greatly increased interest from buyers. In the first week, demand for properties rose about 50 percent.”
