Discussions about the state needing more accurate and up-to-date data on flats in the Czech Republic have been going on for years. Several proposals have been put forward on how to achieve this, from broader data collection during the population census to record-keeping based on data from energy suppliers. The fact remains, however, that the only way to ensure a complete database of residential units in the Czech Republic is proper registration in the basic registers.
And that is exactly what the planned amendment to the Act on Basic Registers envisages in the medium term, most likely next year. The first phase of adding the records of flats should get under way by 2029, and the expanded register should be fully functional for the Census of Population, Houses and Flats in 2031.
A change and an expansion, not a revolution
Why do we write about an expansion? Because the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre has been running RÚIAN – the Register of Territorial Identification, Addresses and Real Estate – since 2012. In it, the state keeps records of and uniquely identifies houses and addresses.
However, the new European regulation on statistics on population, houses and flats (abbreviated as ESOP or ESOPH) requires EU member states to supply, for centrally maintained statistics, at least every three years, data on individual flats. Some partial statistics are even updated on an annual basis. And this is precisely where the Czech Republic has a long-standing gap that it would not be able to close without changes to the registers.
The new regulation will allow a more objective comparison of the housing market situation with neighbouring European countries
At present, the state records plots and buildings in the cadastre, but cannot see “inside” – it has no information on how many unique residential units there are in apartment buildings or how large they are. The aim is therefore to start recording four basic descriptive technical details about residential units.
These are the flat code, i.e. a unified ID automatically assigned by the system; the flat number within the building; the floor on which the flat is located; and, last but not least, the unit's usable floor area.
This is not a collection of personal data
The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre, on the contrary, stresses that information about the current owner, user, tenant or, say, the property's furnishings will not be entered in the “register of flats”. Nor is this part of any long-term plan.
The state's aim is not to “spy on” individual owners, but to enable more flexible housing policy planning. At present, the government has to rely on census data, which can be up to ten years old. Last but not least, the expanded database is also essential for meeting the above-mentioned European Union regulation.
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