Selling a flat in Prague takes seven steps: documents, pricing, listing and viewings, reservation agreement, purchase agreement with escrow, land registry filing, and handover. According to Reas.cz data from spring 2026, a Prague flat sold in 122 days on average, 24 days faster than a year earlier. Add two to three months from the reservation to the money in your account if the buyer uses a mortgage, and the whole exercise runs four to six months. You do not need to be in the Czech Republic for most of it.
This article is the mirror image of our guide to buying a flat in Prague in six stages. Buyer and seller sign the same contracts, from opposite sides of the table.
Step 1: documents (1 to 2 weeks)
Before you list the flat, you need six things:
- An extract from the land registry (výpis z katastru nemovitostí, the list vlastnictví). It shows whether a bank mortgage, an easement or an enforcement order is registered against the flat. Anyone can check the current state online for free, so there is no point hoping a buyer will not notice.
- Your title deed (nabývací titul): the purchase or gift contract by which you acquired the flat, or, if you inherited it, the inheritance ruling (usnesení o dědictví) issued by a notary acting as court commissioner. It establishes how long you have owned the flat, which decides your income tax (see below).
- The energy performance certificate (PENB). For a flat in an apartment building you normally use the certificate for the whole building, which the owners' association (SVJ) is obliged to obtain. If the SVJ does not provide it even after a written request, you may use the energy bills for the last three years instead. The energy class must appear in the listing itself, not only at contract signing. The State Energy Inspection can fine a private individual up to CZK 50,000 and a business up to CZK 100,000 for breaches. A new certificate usually costs CZK 2,500 to 9,000 and is valid for 10 years.
- A certificate from the SVJ stating what debts connected with the building's management pass with the flat. The Civil Code (section 1186) requires the seller to provide it, and any such debts transfer to the buyer, so every informed buyer will ask for it.
- The building's paperwork as one bundle: the SVJ statutes, the last annual service reconciliation (vyúčtování) and a floor plan. None is compulsory, but without them every viewing turns into an interrogation.
- The owner's declaration (prohlášení vlastníka). We recommend having it to hand because it states the flat's real floor area, the figure that belongs in the listing and in the purchase agreement. The area in an old floor plan or in the neighbours' listings often differs, and the discrepancy tends to surface at the contract stage, when it is most expensive. The declaration is filed in the land registry's collection of deeds (sbírka listin): the cadastral office will issue a copy on proof of identity, or you can download it through the ČÚZK remote access service using the case number shown in part D of the building's ownership sheet. The fastest route is usually the SVJ committee or the building manager, who keep it on file; a unit owner has the right to inspect the SVJ's documents under section 1179 of the Civil Code.
If there is a mortgage on the flat, ask your bank for a payoff statement. The remaining loan is repaid directly from the escrow and the bank then issues its consent to deleting the lien. This is a routine scenario, but it has to be written into the contracts from the start.
Two points for owners selling from abroad. You do not have to travel: you can grant a power of attorney to a Czech attorney or sign the contracts abroad, provided the signatures are verified by a Czech embassy or by a local notary with an apostille or superlegalisation, depending on the country. And the escrow pays out to a bank account you name, which does not have to be Czech, though a payout in koruna to a foreign account will involve a conversion, so agree the account and currency with the escrow agent in advance.
With a cooperative flat (družstevní byt) you sell a membership share in the cooperative, not the flat itself. The land registry is not involved and the transfer is faster, but it follows its own rules, which we cover in our article on cooperative versus personal ownership.
Step 2: price
Asking prices on Sreality, the largest Czech listing portal, typically sit 5 to 15% above the price the flat eventually sells for. That figure tells you two things. The neighbours' asking prices are not the price you will get. And the market already has a negotiating margin built in; add another one on top and you drop out of buyers' search filters altogether.
Our view: the flat belongs on the market at the price the market will pay, in the first week. The first two weeks of a listing bring the most enquiries, because everyone with a saved search sees it. An overpriced flat misses that wave, gets labelled as stale after two months, and eventually sells at a discount it never needed to give.
One more practical reason. Most buyers in Prague finance with a mortgage and the bank commissions a valuation. If the valuation comes in below the agreed price, the buyer is short of money and the deal collapses after weeks of negotiation.
Step 3: listing and viewings (2 weeks to 3 months)
Good photographs, a floor plan and a complete description including the energy class are the minimum. Seasonality exists but is weaker than people think: spring and autumn are strongest, summer and December weakest. A correctly priced flat sells in August too, just with fewer people at the viewings.
At viewings, have answers ready on the monthly contribution to the repair fund (fond oprav), planned works on the building, the state of the wiring and plumbing, and why you are selling. A buyer who gets straight answers decides faster.
Step 4: reservation agreement (signed within 1 to 2 weeks of agreeing terms)
Once you and a buyer agree on the price, you sign a reservation agreement and the buyer pays a reservation deposit, usually in the low single digits of percent of the price. From that moment you take the flat off the market. The agreement sets the deadline for signing the purchase agreement; a buyer with a mortgage will want 60 days, because banks do not move faster. The contractual penalty for breaking the agreement should bind both sides, including you if you change your mind about selling.
Step 5: purchase agreement and escrow (1 to 2 weeks)
The purchase agreement and the escrow agreement are usually prepared by an attorney, most often together. The purchase price goes into escrow with an attorney, a notary or a bank and is released to you only after the land registry records the buyer as the owner. For the seller this is the same protection it is for the buyer: the money is deposited before you give up ownership.
A real estate agency is also legally allowed to hold the escrow. We advise against it in every case, and we say so as a real estate agency ourselves: escrow with an attorney, notary or bank has safeguards that agency escrow does not. Attorney escrow is priced by agreement, usually CZK 5,500 to 15,000, sometimes as a percentage of the amount held for larger sums. Who pays is negotiable, but in practice it is mostly the seller, or the agency selling the property.
Signatures on the purchase agreement must be officially verified, by a notary, a Czech POINT office or an attorney.
Step 6: land registry filing (about 30 days)
The application to register the transfer (návrh na vklad) is usually filed by the attorney together with the purchase agreement. The administrative fee is CZK 2,000, or CZK 1,600 if filed electronically through the cadastre portal. In practice the seller usually pays it, but the law does not assign it to anyone, so the purchase agreement should say who does.
The registry cannot approve the transfer earlier than 20 days after filing. This waiting period protects owners against fraudulent transfers and nobody can shorten it. Including the decision itself, registration usually takes 21 to 30 days if the filing is free of errors. Once the buyer is registered, the escrow releases the money: first to your bank to repay any mortgage, the remainder to you.
Step 7: handover (within days of registration)
You and the buyer sign a handover protocol recording the state of the flat and the meter readings. The utilities are transferred on the basis of those readings and you notify the SVJ of the change of owner. Overpayments and underpayments for services in the year of sale are settled in the annual reconciliation, so the purchase agreement should state how the parties split them.
What selling costs
A model example, not a valuation of your flat: a sale at CZK 9,000,000.
- Agency commission: our rate is usually 3% of the sale price including VAT, ranging from 2 to 5% depending on value and complexity. On the model flat that is CZK 270,000. Whoever you use, ask for the figure including VAT.
- PENB, if the building does not have one: CZK 2,500 to 9,000.
- Attorney for the purchase agreement and escrow: by agreement, escrow from about CZK 5,500 to 15,000.
- Land registry fee: CZK 2,000, or CZK 1,600 electronically.
- Income tax: see the next section. For most sales of a home it is zero.
Income tax on the sale
Income from selling a flat is exempt from Czech income tax if you meet at least one of three conditions. First, the time test: 5 years of ownership for flats acquired up to 31 December 2020, and 10 years for flats acquired from 1 January 2021. Second, residence: you lived in the flat for at least 2 years immediately before the sale. Third, you use the proceeds for your own housing, but this one must be notified to the tax office by the filing deadline for the year of sale; without the notification the exemption is lost. Exempt income above CZK 5,000,000 must also be reported to the tax office, even though nothing is paid on it.
Non-residents are taxed in the Czech Republic on the sale of Czech property under the same rules and with the same exemptions. If none applies, you owe tax on the difference between the sale price and the acquisition price after deducting expenses, which include the commission. The rate is 15%, and 23% on the part of the annual tax base above CZK 1,762,812 for 2026. Our guide to Czech property taxes goes into the details.
Selling a flat with a tenant in it
The lease does not end with the sale: the buyer steps into the landlord's rights and obligations (section 2221 of the Civil Code). A tenanted flat therefore appeals to a narrower group of buyers, mainly investors, and nobody buys it as their own home. You do not need the tenant's consent to sell, but it is fair to tell them early and agree on viewings; nothing speeds up a tenanted sale more.
The timeline at a glance
- Documents: 1 to 2 weeks
- Pricing: part of the preparation
- Listing and viewings: 2 weeks to 3 months
- Reservation agreement: 1 to 2 weeks
- Purchase agreement and escrow: 1 to 2 weeks
- Land registry: about 30 days
- Handover: within days of registration
From the decision to sell to the money in your account, plan on four to six months. Two waits cannot be shortened: the buyer's bank and the land registry. The only variable you control is how long the listing sits, and that is decided by the price in the first week.
Our view
Most sales that drag on have the same cause: a price set from the neighbours' listings rather than from what actually sold in the building and the streets around it. We advise sellers to start from registered sale prices, price the flat so that the first wave of enquiries arrives, and negotiate from a position of two serious buyers rather than one. The second most common mistake is signing a reservation agreement that binds only the buyer, or only you. Have someone read the contracts on both sides before you sign them, when selling just as when buying.
