Lithuanian Real Property Register

Registrų centras, the Centre of Registers, maintains Lithuania’s public registers. Two of them concern anyone buying a flat: the Real Property Register, which records the property and the rights over it, and the Register of Legal Entities, which records the company on the other side of the contract. The notary consults both before a deed is signed. A buyer can consult them far earlier.

What an entry in the register holds

Every registered object has its own entry and its own unique register number: a land plot, a building, an apartment, a commercial unit on the ground floor, a parking space in the underground garage. A flat is therefore not a line inside the building’s entry. It is an object in its own right, with its own number that follows it through every future sale.

The first part of an entry describes the object as the cadastre measured it. Address, purpose of use, floor, total and useful area, the year the building was put into use and, where a building is not yet finished, the recorded degree of completion. Alongside the entry sits the cadastral plan of the flat, which is the drawing a buyer should hold next to the rooms during a viewing.

The remaining parts record people and charges rather than bricks:

• the owner or owners, and the form of ownership — one owner, shares defined in writing, or the joint property of spouses;
• the legal basis of the current ownership, such as a purchase-sale deed, a gift, inheritance or a court decision;
• encumbrances: a mortgage, a seizure entered at the request of a court or a bailiff, a servitude giving a neighbour a right of way or a right to run a pipe, a usufruct, a registered lease, a prohibition on transfer, or a note that proceedings are pending.

How an extract is obtained

An extract is a dated printout of the entry. It can be ordered through the enterprise’s self-service portal, at a customer service unit, or by the notary handling the transaction. Access to the personal data of owners is restricted by Lithuanian law, so in practice a buyer either receives the extract from the seller, or relies on the notary, who queries the registers directly and is entitled to see them.

An extract describes the register as it stood at the moment of issue, no later. A scan the seller forwarded weeks ago proves what was true then. That is why the notary repeats the check electronically on the day of signing, and why an early extract is a screening tool rather than a guarantee.

What it proves, and what it leaves out

Registered data carry public credibility: they are treated as correct until somebody has them corrected or annulled, and a right becomes effective against third parties once it is registered. A seller who is not named in the entry cannot transfer the flat, and a mortgage visible in the entry does not disappear because the seller says it has been paid off. Removal of a charge is itself a registered act.

The register is silent on a good deal, however. It does not describe the condition of the flat, it does not reveal that an internal partition was moved without approval, and it says nothing about arrears to the building’s management company or to utility suppliers. Those obligations attach to the property’s running costs and are checked with the manager, not with the registrar.

Read together with the register of legal entities

The same institution keeps the Register of Legal Entities. For a buyer dealing with a developer, the two registers answer different halves of one question. The property entry shows what is being sold and whether the seller may sell it. The company entry shows who the seller is: the company code, the registered address, the manager, filed annual accounts, and entries about restructuring or insolvency if any exist.

Two checks follow from reading them side by side. The person signing must be the manager named in the company entry, or someone holding a power of attorney in the form the notary accepts. And the company selling flats should appear in the property register as the owner of the plot and the building, or as the holder of a registered right over it.

Lastly, compare the company code printed in your draft contract with the code in the register, character by character. Marketing material, an office sign and a contracting party are three different things, and only the last one is bound by what you sign.

The order a buyer reads it in

A workable sequence is: order or request the extract before negotiating seriously; read the encumbrances first, because they decide whether a deal is possible at all; then compare area and layout with the cadastral plan; then confirm, with the notary, whether a spouse’s consent or any other consent is needed on the seller’s side.

None of this replaces the notary’s own examination, which is part of the Lithuanian procedure rather than an optional service. It does mean you arrive at the notary’s office knowing what the entry says, instead of hearing it for the first time while a deed is being read aloud.

This article outlines how the register works. For a specific flat, ask your notary or a Lithuanian adviser to read the entry with you.