The Story of a Surveying Mistake

Two adjoining properties – a historic tenement building with separate units and the neighboring building of Company X.

The problem came to light by chance – during Company X’s preparations to sell one of the premises, it turned out that, according to the records, the building owned by Company X stands on a plot of land assigned in the land and mortgage register to the tenement building in which the clients’ premises had been separated, and vice versa – the land and mortgage register for the clients’ property showed a plot located beneath the Company X building.

In practice, this meant something downright absurd.
The residents of the tenement building were formally the owners of apartments in… the neighboring building.
And yet the buildings had stood exactly where they always had for years.

The question was only: how to fix it?
The first intuition was obvious. The owners of the premises, represented by the Law Firm, together with Company X, submitted an application to change the data in the land and property register.
The inspection of the property and analysis of historical documents confirmed that the actual course of the development has been different for decades than indicated in the records.
The source of the problem dated back to the 1970s, when, during the preparation of a land changes register, addresses were probably mistakenly assigned to neighboring plots. Later, the error began to take on a life of its own.

Despite the unequivocal arrangements, the administrative authorities refused to make the change — it was determined that changing the plot designations would allegedly result in the exchange of the properties.

Since the administrative proceedings took an unexpected turn, the Law Firm, while they were still ongoing, filed an application for an attempt at an amicable settlement concerning the agreement of the contents of both land and mortgage registers (changes to the designation of the plots). However, the court found the settlement inadmissible.

It was therefore necessary to initiate proceedings to reconcile the contents of the land and mortgage registers.

The unsatisfactory ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court and the prolonged civil proceedings have prompted us to reconsider the possibility of reaching a settlement.

The possibility of reconciling the legal status of land and mortgage registers by means of a settlement continues to raise controversy both in case law and in legal doctrine.

We came to the conclusion that it was worth trying, because the evidence gathered in the meantime, over the course of the 10 years of the case, during numerous proceedings — including the surveyors’ inspection reports of both properties, the land changes register from the 1970s, which was the “original source” of the error in the records, etc. — confirmed the facts that were undisputed between the parties.

In 2026, after six months of analysis and work by the representatives of both parties and the notary on the content of the settlement agreement and the list of its annexes, the settlement agreement was concluded.
And today:
✅ the land and mortgage registers already contain the correct plot numbers,
✅ the address designations have been corrected,
✅ the changes also covered all apartment ownership registers of the flat owners.

Moral? The biggest challenge in real estate law is often not determining what is true, but finding a procedure that will allow that truth to be effectively disclosed in land and mortgage registers.