Red Tape Hot Box on house registries
Whoever has tried to enter his house, apartment or firm in the government's real estate register knows that in Warsaw you have to wait for 10 months on average before this procedure can be completed and your name is safely inscribed in the official books. On many occasions the sluggish municipal bureaucracy in dealing with registration can create genuine difficulties for people. After all, anyone who is not entered as the owner of his house or apartment in the real estate register is not entitled to sell it, nor can he obtain a housing loan based on the property's mortgage value.
According to the justice ministry, the time it takes to register property will be shortened as soon as the present registries are replaced with computers. The only problem is that to upgrade the entire system, around E192 million (zł. 800 million) is needed, and nobody has it. Moreover, the justice administration is already buried under E48 million (zł. 200 million) of debt, so there's no point in hoping that this change for the better will occur any time very soon.
But changes are on the way. The Senate is now considering an act to computerise real estate registers to replace the paper real estate registers with computer-based records and a central real estate ownership database.
In the meantime, however, there will continue to be more and more cases to investigate and register. This is also the reason why many people who can't wait, register their houses and apartments "privately" or to put it another way, illegally. This costs around zł. 800-zł. 1,000, but they have what they need in only a week.
So far, of the 40 million pieces of real estate that exist in Poland, only 30% are registered. In many circumstances the mess that prevails in municipal offices, which are responsible for completing all real estate registrations, is costly. For example, municipalities lose around half of their potential incomes from real estate taxes because they are unable to determine the amount of tax they should collect, and from whom. From the average citizen's point of view, this is the only positive thing that comes from this real estate register chaos.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at mdembinski@wbj.pl.
According to the justice ministry, the time it takes to register property will be shortened as soon as the present registries are replaced with computers. The only problem is that to upgrade the entire system, around E192 million (zł. 800 million) is needed, and nobody has it. Moreover, the justice administration is already buried under E48 million (zł. 200 million) of debt, so there's no point in hoping that this change for the better will occur any time very soon.
But changes are on the way. The Senate is now considering an act to computerise real estate registers to replace the paper real estate registers with computer-based records and a central real estate ownership database.
In the meantime, however, there will continue to be more and more cases to investigate and register. This is also the reason why many people who can't wait, register their houses and apartments "privately" or to put it another way, illegally. This costs around zł. 800-zł. 1,000, but they have what they need in only a week.
So far, of the 40 million pieces of real estate that exist in Poland, only 30% are registered. In many circumstances the mess that prevails in municipal offices, which are responsible for completing all real estate registrations, is costly. For example, municipalities lose around half of their potential incomes from real estate taxes because they are unable to determine the amount of tax they should collect, and from whom. From the average citizen's point of view, this is the only positive thing that comes from this real estate register chaos.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at mdembinski@wbj.pl.
