Land register (gruntovnica) in B&H: registration of ownership and deletion of rights

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, dealings in real property are closely tied to the land registers, the public registers in which rights over real property are recorded. This text explains in plain language what the land registers are, what the purpose and importance of registering ownership is, how the procedure for registration and deletion of rights works, which time limits and fees apply, and how the rules differ in the Federation of B&H, in Republika Srpska and in the Brčko District.

What is the land register (gruntovnica)?

The land register is a public book and a public register of rights in rem over real property, of other rights which the law provides for registration, and of other legally prescribed facts of relevance for legal transactions (Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Law on Land Registers of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Official Gazette of the FB&H nos. 58/02, 19/03, 54/04, 32/19 and 61/22). Real property within the meaning of that law means land, buildings, flats and business premises as separate parts of a building, and other structures.

The land register consists of the main land register, the collection of deeds and the auxiliary registers, and the main land register is kept for a single cadastral municipality (Article 15). For that reason every application is tied to a cadastral municipality and a folio number, not merely to the street address. Subject matter jurisdiction over the land registers lies with the courts (Article 11), and the court with territorial jurisdiction is the one in whose area the property is situated (Article 12). A land registry office operates within the court, and the work is carried out by a land registry clerk under the supervision of the land registry judge (Article 14).

It is essential to distinguish the land register from the cadastre. The ownership sheet is part of the land register folio and is issued by the land registry office, whereas the possession sheet is issued by the cadastre and records possession and the factual situation. A possession sheet does not by itself prove the right of ownership, so the land registry office will not allow a change of ownership to be entered on the basis of it. That is why the land register must always be checked before a purchase: the statutory presumption of accuracy attaches only to a right entered in the land register (Article 9, paragraph 1), and the register also shows whether the property is encumbered. The divergence between these two records is, in practice, the most common source of misunderstanding.

Registration of rights over real property and of every change affecting the data in the land register is mandatory (Article 8), and all real property is to be entered in the land register (Article 6). In legal transactions, real property is designated according to the data from the land register (Article 10).

Land registers in the Federation of B&H, Republika Srpska and the Brčko District

Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a single land register. The matter is governed in three places, with almost identical rules on the constitutive effect of registration and on public trust, but with different competent courts, different names for the bodies involved and, most importantly for a buyer, different requirements as to the form of the contract.

The table scrolls left and right.

The difference in form is the most expensive mistake a buyer can make. In the Federation of B&H the Constitutional Court of the FB&H, by judgment U-15/10 of 2 December 2015, struck down Article 73 of the Law on Notaries, and by judgment U-22/16 of 6 March 2019 also struck down provisions of five statutes which prescribed mandatory notarial processing. Under the legal position of the Civil Division of the Supreme Court of the Federation of B&H no. 70 0 Dn 009610 22 Spp of 8 December 2022, the signatures of the contracting parties on contracts transferring rights over real property must be certified before a notary or before the court, while the contract itself may be drawn up by an attorney.

In Republika Srpska and in the Brčko District notarial processing remains mandatory. Under Article 57 of the Law on the Notarial Service of Republika Srpska, legal transactions whose subject matter is the transfer or acquisition of ownership and other rights in rem over immovable property are null and void if they are not made in the form of a notarially processed deed. A contract that has merely been certified there therefore produces no legal effect and cannot be used to register a transfer. A buyer who carries the practice of the Federation over to a purchase in Banja Luka or Brčko is left without registration and often without a legal basis as well. More on this: the notary in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the role of the lawyer.

Taxation differs too. In the Federation of B&H a real property transfer tax is payable, governed by cantonal legislation, most often at a rate of 5 per cent, as a rule borne by the seller, and in Sarajevo Canton by the buyer. In Republika Srpska the real property transfer tax was abolished on 1 January 2012, so the buyer pays an annual immovable property tax and the seller capital gains tax. In the Brčko District no tax is levied on the transfer of ownership. Foreign nationals acquiring property in B&H are additionally subject to the reciprocity requirement, with a list of countries for which reciprocity exists.

The purpose and importance of entry in the land register

Entry of a right in the land register is not a mere formality. Under Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Law on Land Registers, ownership and other rights over real property come into being only upon entry in the land register. Immediately alongside that rule stands the exception: paragraph 2 of the same article expressly provides that this does not affect the rules on the acquisition of ownership, or of other rights, by way of inheritance. The same applies to acquisition by operation of law and on the basis of a final decision of a court or another competent authority. In those cases the right has been acquired before the entry, and the entry is declaratory: it makes the right visible to third parties and makes it possible to dispose of it.

The practical consequence is simple. If you have bought the property, you are not the owner until it is registered. If you have inherited it, you are the owner even without registration, but until the entry is made you can neither sell it nor mortgage it, nor can you reliably resist a bona fide third party acquirer.

The advantages of proper registration are these:

• Legal certainty: a registered right is presumed to be accurate (Article 9, paragraph 1), so the owner does not have to prove afresh each time how the right was acquired.
• Priority and rank: the rank of an entry follows the order of entries (Article 45, paragraph 2), and that order is determined by the time the application is received in the daily register (Articles 33 and 34). Where the same property has been sold twice, the outcome turns not on the date of the contract but on the moment the application for registration was filed.
• The ability to dispose: without the seller being registered, a transfer of ownership cannot be carried out in the land register and no mortgage can be entered, because registration is permitted only with the consent of the person who, at the time the application is filed, is registered as the holder of the right (Article 41, paragraph 1). The contract itself does not thereby become void, but it remains unenforceable in the register until the position is put right.
• Easier inheritance: registered property passes to the heirs in the probate proceedings without delay. If the property is not registered in the name of the deceased, the heirs must first prove the right of ownership, which makes inheritance slower and more expensive.
• The principle of public trust: where a person acquires a right in good faith, by way of a legal transaction, relying on the land register, the content of the register is deemed accurate as against him. That protection has two statutory limits (Article 9, paragraph 2): it does not operate where the accuracy of the land register has been challenged by an entered objection, nor where the inaccuracy was known to the acquirer or was unknown to him through gross negligence. Good faith is assessed as at the time the application for registration is filed (Article 9, paragraph 4). Obtaining an excerpt immediately before filing the application is therefore not a formality but a condition of that protection.

Registration and deletion of rights

Registration of ownership

The procedure is commenced by filing an application for registration with the land registry office of the court in whose area the property is situated (Articles 3 and 12). In the Federation of B&H the real property transfer tax is paid beforehand. Under Articles 3, 4 and 7 the application is accompanied by:

1. a duly completed application on the prescribed form, the standard texts of which are issued by the minister of justice,
2. the deed constituting the basis for acquisition of the right in rem, in the case of a change of ownership the deed of alienation or transfer (for example a contract for the sale of real property in the prescribed form) or a certified copy of a final court decision,
3. the consent of the person who, at the time the application is filed, is registered as the holder of the right being transferred, altered, restricted or deleted; that consent must be certified by a notary unless notarial processing is required for the contract itself (Article 41, paragraphs 1 and 2), and it may be replaced by a court decision or a court settlement,
4. proof that the court fee has been paid (Article 3, paragraph 3),
5. the tax authority decision assessing the real property transfer tax, where that tax is payable,
6. the cadastral change report together with a copy of the cadastral plan, where the property itself is being entered in the land register (Article 7).

A separate land register folio is opened for every ownership of a flat (Article 30), so documentation on the division into separate units is filed with the application. The same applies to business premises as separate parts of a building. For structures, the building permit and the occupancy permit are also required.

The land registry clerk examines whether the documents have been submitted in the prescribed form, whether they are consistent with the state of the land register and whether the consent under Article 41 is present (Article 42), and then issues a decision on registration (Articles 31 and 43). The entry is then made on the basis of that decision (Article 45, paragraph 1), and the decision is served on the parties only after the entry has been carried out in the land register (Article 46, paragraph 2). Until then the application is visible on the excerpt as a pending-application note, known as a plomba.

Deletion of rights and deletion of a mortgage

Deletion is the reverse procedure: the removal of a registered right when it ceases or passes to another. The most common example is deletion of a mortgage after a loan has been repaid. As far as the land register is concerned, the mortgage does not cease on repayment alone: the bank issues a deletion consent, known as a brisovnica, a written declaration by which it agrees to the deletion of its security right, and on that basis the owner files an application with the land registry office together with proof that the court fee has been paid. A final court decision may serve instead of the deletion consent.

A deleted entry does not vanish from the register without trace. Amendments and deletions receive their own entry numbers, cross-referenced in the annotations (Article 50), and an excerpt may, at the applicant's request or where it is produced by photocopying, also contain deleted entries (Article 79, paragraph 2). That is useful: the history of entries shows how and when an encumbrance arose and ceased. When a mortgage is deleted, the owner may at the same time request an annotation reserving priority for the registration of a new mortgage up to the amount of the deleted one. If the debtor does not pay, the creditor is satisfied out of the value of the property in enforcement proceedings.

Time limits, fees and appeal

• Inspection of the land register is free. Inspection of the land registers, of the accompanying files, deeds and auxiliary documents is unrestricted in the presence of an official of the land registry office (Article 77). The statute expressly ties the fee to the issue of a written excerpt (Article 78, paragraph 1), not to the inspection itself.
• The excerpt is a public document (Article 78, paragraph 2). It is signed by the land registry clerk, who confirms its authenticity with a seal and the date of issue (Article 79, paragraph 3). That date matters: the position may change the very next day, which is why banks and notaries ask for a recent excerpt.
• The amount of the court fee is not laid down in the Law on Land Registers but in the laws on court fees, which in the Federation of B&H are enacted at cantonal level, so the amount depends on the canton and on the type of entry. We will give you the exact figure for the court concerned before the application is filed.
• The time limit for an appeal is 15 days. An interested person may lodge an appeal against a decision of the land registry clerk with the competent court within 15 days, running from the day the copy of the decision is received or from the day the act complained of becomes known (Article 76, paragraph 1). The appeal may also be handed in at the land registry office, which must forward it without delay (paragraph 2), and it is decided under the rules of civil procedure (paragraph 3).
• Correction of an inaccurate entry does not require the consent of the registered person if the inaccuracy is proved (Article 41, paragraph 4). That is the route for obvious errors in the data. Where the right itself is in dispute rather than the data, the matter is resolved by an action for deletion or correction of the entry in civil proceedings.

If the property is not registered, or is registered in another name

This is more common in B&H than people assume: a house bought under a contract from the 1980s which was never carried through, a register still showing a long deceased predecessor, or a flat in a building that was never divided into separate units. There are solutions, but they are chosen according to what exactly is missing.

• Only the entry is missing. If the predecessor is duly registered and you hold a valid deed, an ordinary registration is carried out. If one intermediate link is missing in the chain, that entry is made first and yours only afterwards.
• The property is not registered at all. Proceedings for the establishment of a land register folio are conducted. The land registry office publicly announces the forthcoming establishment on the court notice board, in the official gazettes and in at least two daily newspapers, inviting persons claiming a right to report it (Article 67). Once those time limits expire, an interested person may pursue his rights in ordinary court proceedings (Article 68).
• Someone else is registered and you are the true owner. A declaration of the right of ownership and deletion or correction of the entry is sought in civil proceedings, under the rules on property and legal relations. While the litigation is pending it is advisable to seek an entered objection against the accuracy of the land register, that is an annotation of the dispute, since this brings to an end the protection of a bona fide acquirer under Article 9, paragraph 2.
• A flat in a building not divided into separate units. Until the conditions for registering ownership of separate parts of a building are met, the Book of Deposited Contracts remains in force as a transitional solution (Article 94). Entry in that book is not a substitute for registration in the land register but a bridge to it.
• Inheriting unregistered property. The heir acquires the right under the rules of succession and not by registration, since Article 5, paragraph 2 exempts inheritance from the rule on the constitutive effect of entry. Even so, the property can be included in the estate only if it is proved to have belonged to the deceased.

In all of these situations the key is to separate two things: whether your right is disputed, or whether only the data in the register are wrong. The first is resolved in litigation, the second by an application to the land registry office.

Key documents about a property: who issues them and what they prove

Three documents are most often confused in real property transactions, although their legal weight differs materially:

The table scrolls left and right.

Glossary of the land register

Land register folio (zemljisnoknjizni ulozak)

The basic unit of the land register. One land register body is entered in it, and it consists of a heading and three sections: A, B and C (Article 16). The heading states the name of the court, the cadastral municipality and the folio number (Article 17).

Sheet A (inventory sheet)

The first section of the folio. It contains the cadastral parcel number, the name or description and the land use category of the parcel, its size (area), particulars of any merger or division of the land register body, and rights in rem created in favour of that body, for example a right of way in favour of the parcel (Article 18).

Sheet B (ownership sheet)

The second section. It contains the legal basis of the entry, the name of the owner and, where there is more than one owner, whether the property is held in joint ownership or in co-ownership, with the size of the co-ownership share expressed as a fraction, together with restrictions on the power of disposal and annotations concerning ownership (Articles 19 and 54).

Sheet C (encumbrances)

The third section. It contains the legal basis of the entry and the rights encumbering the land register body, with the annotations relating to them. For a mortgage and a land charge it additionally records the monetary amount, the interest rate, ancillary claims and particulars of any consent to immediate enforcement (Article 20).

Registration (uknjizba)

The definitive entry by which rights over real property are unconditionally acquired, transferred, restricted or extinguished.

Provisional entry (predbiljezba)

A conditional, temporary entry of a right by which acquisition, transfer, restriction or extinction is achieved by subsequent justification (Article 2, paragraph 3). It is used where a condition for full registration is missing but rank is already to be secured.

Annotation (zabiljezba)

An entry of circumstances and facts affecting the power to dispose of the property (Article 2, paragraph 4). It may concern personal circumstances such as minority or guardianship, but also the opening of bankruptcy, the existence of a dispute, expropriation proceedings, priority rank or compulsory administration. An annotation of a dispute on the excerpt is the most serious warning a buyer can encounter.

Pending-application note (plomba)

A note on the excerpt recording an application for registration which has been entered in the daily register but on which no decision has yet been issued or the entry has not yet been carried out (Article 80). For a buyer a plomba means that the position shown is not final and that proceedings are under way which may change it, so before signing it must be established what is being applied for and by whom.

Deletion consent (brisovnica)

A written declaration by a creditor, most often a bank, agreeing to the deletion of its right from the land register. It does not by itself delete the encumbrance; it is the document on the basis of which deletion is sought.

Book of Deposited Contracts (KPU)

A transitional record of contracts concerning flats and business premises, which remains in force until the conditions for registering ownership of separate parts of a building are met (Article 94).

Cadastral municipality

The territorial unit for which a single main land register is kept (Article 15). Without the cadastral municipality and the parcel or folio number an application for an excerpt cannot be filed.

Land registry services of the law office

The Prnjavorac Law Office provides legal assistance and representation in all proceedings connected with the land registers. Our services cover:

• Advice and review of documentation: legal analysis of title documents before the purchase or sale of a property, verification of the state of the land register, of encumbrances and annotations, and advice on how to protect your rights.
• Registration of property in the land registers: preparation and filing of applications for the registration of land, houses, flats, business premises and other structures, including entries based on court decisions.
• Changes and transfers of rights: registration of a change of ownership under a contract of sale, a gift or a decision on inheritance, registration and deletion of mortgages, provisional entries and annotations.
• Obtaining land registry documentation: land register excerpts, copies from the collection of deeds and other documents from the land registry office.
• Establishment and correction: establishment of a land register folio, correction of an inaccurate entry, reconciliation of the land register with the cadastre and the property and legal relations arising from that.
• Representation before the courts: full representation of clients in land registry proceedings, from filing the application to an appeal against a decision of the land registry office and litigation for deletion or correction of an entry.
• Work under a power of attorney, without travelling to B&H: clients abroad may have the entire procedure conducted under a power of attorney granted to an attorney, without appearing in person at the land registry office.

Our attorneys for land registry matters make sure that every entry or deletion is carried out correctly and on time, protecting the client's interests in the best possible way and in accordance with the legislation of B&H.

Frequently asked questions about the land register