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[BUYING AND SELLING REAL ESTATE IN HUNGARY]
this can shorten the procedure to approximately 12-15 days. 4. The sale and purchase agreement The sale and purchase agreement of a real estate has certain, strict formal and content requirements that must be met in order to be suitable for registering the transfer of ownership in the Land Registry 4.1 Formal requirements The most important formal requirements for the transfer documentation of any real estate are the followings: a) the agreement must be concluded in writing; b) it must be prepared and countersigned by a Hungarian attorney-at-law or public notary; c) in case of a multiple-page document, all pages must be signed by the contracting parties and the countersigner. 4.2 Compulsory elements The Hungarian law prescribes several elements that must be included in the property sale and purchase agreement. Some notable elements are: a) detailed definition of the property; b) certain scope of data of the contracting parties (among others, birth name, place and date of birth, address, mother’s family name, tax identification number, or registered seat, registration number, statistical number, tax identification number in case of legal persons); c) the exact legal title of the transfer (e.g. sale and purchase);
d) unconditional and irrevocable statement of the registered owner on consenting to the transfer of the title (“ registration consent ”) (which statement may also be made later separately, especially if the payment of the purchase price is made in instalments); e) regulations on the handing over of an energetic certificate (energy certificate is a document made by an authorized expert that gives information about the energy features of the property, generally the seller is obliged to prepare such energy certificate and to hand it over to the buyer at contract signing). 4.3 Typical further elements of an agreement Although the inclusion of the below elements is not legally required, according to market practice the parties apply them frequently. a) Payment of the purchase price in more instalments In case the purchase price is paid in more instalments, there are two typical scenarios regarding the transfer of title.
The first option is when the parties submit the request to registration, but with a request for suspension, meaning that the Land Registry will not deal with the request until the seller issues the registration consent after the payment of the full purchase price. This method ensures that, due to the ranking principle, the buyer’s request cannot be
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ILN Real Estate Group – Buying and Selling Real Estate Series
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