Property for foreigners? The President signed an act.

Expansion of the catalogue of entities obliged to transfer to Ministry of Interior and Administration documents concerning the acquisition about real estate by foreigners is the main purpose of the amendments the law, which was signed by President Andrzej Duda. Thanks to the new Act Ministry of Interior will be able to get more information about acquisition of real estate by foreigners. The new rules expand the catalogue of documents required by notary – in addition to notarial acts – acts of authority and inheritance, Protocol inheritance.

It is also about the contracts for the sale of shares, shares or of rights and obligations, with signatures notarized, in accordance with which the foreign citizen has acquired or taken a share of stock or, as a rule, the rights and obligations of a trading company that is the owner or permanent user of the real estate located in Poland. Until the law changes, Minister of Interior was able to get this information only by notaries and courts. The availability of complete data on this question depends on the timely transmission of documents. In 2011-2013, were fixed about 1,300 cases of late submission of notarized acts. In 2014, were 449 such cases and in 2015 were 318. The law also stipulates that organs of government will have to pass Ministry of Interior and Administration, the final administrative decision on the basis of which a foreigner has acquired property. Because of this this,  Ministry of Interior should get a full knowledge about transactions with participation of foreigners and, in case of detection of violations of the law on acquisition of real estate by foreigners is to provide a faster reaction.

In accordance with the updates that were released in 1920 by the law about real estate acquisition by foreigners, such purchases require a permit, which is issued by the head of  Interior Ministry, if there is no objection from the Defence Minister, and in the case of agricultural property - also the Minister of Agriculture. Prepared by Ministry of interior, the amendments are a consequence of the recommendations of the Supreme Audit Office of Poland after the verification of sales from 2011-2013 agricultural property of the Treasury through the branches of the real Estate Agency for Agricultural purposes in Szczecin, Warsaw and Wroclaw. In this report, the Supreme Chamber of Control of Poland has assessed that the current laws "are not sufficient to ensure the collection of comprehensive information and documents described above transactions involving foreigners, and connected with it - they hamper the correct keeping of the registers of the Ministry of interior". The latest report of the Ministry of Interior show that in 2015 foreigners purchased in Poland 460 hectares of land. It is more than two times less than the year before, when they sold one thousand ha. In the years 1990-2015, foreigners received more than 25 thousand permits for the acquisition of land with a total area of over 52 thousand ha.