Buying a flat in Prague takes six stages: reservation agreement, financing, purchase agreement together with escrow, cadastre filing, a roughly 20-day statutory waiting period at the land registry, and handover. With a mortgage, plan for two to three months between agreeing a price and holding the keys. A cash purchase can close in six to eight weeks.
Two basics before the stages. Foreigners, including non-EU citizens, can buy property in the Czech Republic without restrictions. And there is no real estate transfer tax; the Czech Republic abolished it in 2020, so the purchase price and transaction costs are what you actually pay.
Stage 1: reservation agreement (usually 1 to 2 weeks to sign)
Once you and the seller agree on the price and the other terms of the transaction, you sign a reservation agreement, most often prepared by the seller's agent. You pay a reservation deposit, the flat comes off the market, and the agreement sets a deadline for signing the purchase agreement. Five things to check before you sign:
a) The agreement must clearly state that the deposit counts toward the purchase price. If it doesn't, you are paying an extra amount on top of the price.
b) There is usually a contractual penalty for breaking the reservation agreement. Make sure the penalty binds both sides, not just you.
c) The deadline matters more than most buyers realize. If you finance with a mortgage, negotiate 60 days if you can; banks rarely move faster, and if you miss the deadline through your own fault, you typically forfeit the deposit.
d) If you don't fully understand the reservation agreement, ask someone who does: a trustworthy agent or an attorney who specializes in real estate. Signing something you don't understand can be very costly.
e) The property must be completely and correctly defined already in the reservation agreement: not just the unit itself, but also the land, the parking, and anything else that is part of the purchase. What is not listed there is hard to claim later.
Our view: the reservation agreement is the document buyers sign most carelessly, because it feels like a formality. It is the one that binds your money first. We have clients review it with the same attention as the purchase agreement, especially the penalty and forfeit conditions.
Stage 2: financing (2 to 6 weeks, runs in parallel with stage 3)
If you need a mortgage, this stage sets the pace of the whole purchase: the bank orders an appraisal of the flat, verifies your income, and issues the approval. Czech banks lend to foreigners, though conditions differ by residency status; average offered rates were around 5.4% in August 2026.
Stage 3: purchase agreement and escrow (about 1 to 2 weeks)
The purchase agreement (kupní smlouva) and the escrow agreement (smlouva o úschově) are usually prepared together, most often by the attorney handling the transaction. In a Czech transaction the purchase money never goes straight to the seller. It sits in escrow with an attorney, a notary, or a bank, and is released only after the land registry records you as the owner. This is the standard protection for both sides, not an exotic extra, and sellers expect it.
One warning from us: a real estate agency can also legally hold the escrow, and some agencies offer it. Never agree to this. Agency escrow carries none of the safeguards of an attorney, notary, or bank escrow, and if the agency fails or misuses the account, your money goes with it. We say this as a real estate agency ourselves: keep the escrow with an attorney, a notary, or a bank.
The purchase agreement is signed with officially verified signatures; a notary, a Czech Point office, or your attorney can verify them. One signed counterpart with verified signatures goes to the land registry later, so the formalities are not optional.
After signing, you transfer the purchase price into escrow. Escrow agreements commonly allow several days for this, and with a mortgage the bank usually sends its part directly to the escrow account.
Stage 4: filing at the cadastre (1 day)
Usually the attorney handling the transaction files the application to register the transfer (návrh na vklad) with the cadastral office, together with the purchase contract. The administrative fee is CZK 2,000, or CZK 1,600 if the application is prepared and filed electronically through the cadastre portal. In practice the seller usually pays this fee, but the law does not assign it to anyone, so make sure the purchase agreement states who pays. From the moment of filing, the flat is yours-in-waiting: ownership, once registered, takes legal effect retroactively to the filing date.
Stage 5: the waiting period (about 30 days)
The cadastral office must wait 20 days before it can register the transfer. This statutory period exists to protect owners against fraudulent filings; the current owner is notified and can object. Including the decision itself, the whole registration usually takes 21 to 30 days, provided the filing is free of errors.
Nothing about this wait is negotiable and no one can speed it up, so build it into your plans. Once the registry shows you as the owner, the escrow releases the money to the seller.
Stage 6: handover (within days of registration)
You and the seller sign a handover protocol recording the state of the flat and the meter readings for electricity, gas, and water. Those readings are what you use to transfer the utility contracts into your name. If the building has an owners' association (SVJ), notify it of the change. An earlier handover, before registration, can sometimes be negotiated; we arrange it for clients now and then, but it depends entirely on the seller. If you are under time pressure, negotiate this at the very beginning, not after the contracts are signed.
One administrative task remains: file a property tax return by 31 January of the year after the purchase. The documents worth collecting from the seller at handover deserve their own checklist; get them while the seller is still motivated to cooperate.
The timeline in one view
- Reservation agreement: 1 to 2 weeks
- Financing: 2 to 6 weeks, in parallel
- Purchase agreement and escrow: about 1 to 2 weeks
- Cadastre filing: 1 day
- Registration wait: about 30 days
- Handover: within days of registration
Cash purchase: six to eight weeks in total. With a mortgage: two to three months, and the bank and the cadastre are the two waits you cannot shorten.
Our take on timing pressure
Deadlines drive most bad purchases we see. A reservation deadline, a seller pushing to sign, a bank offer with an expiry date: none of these is a reason to skip a legal review or a proper look at the building's documents. For an investment purchase, our position is unchanged: only buy when you are certain the deal is good, and letting ten opportunities pass costs less than overpaying once. Buying a home you will live in is a different decision; there, fit matters more than squeezing the price. In both cases the six stages above take the time they take, and a buyer who knows the timeline negotiates more calmly than one who is guessing.
