There are no restrictions on a foreigner buying property in the Czech Republic. The rule that once split buyers into locals and outsiders — §17 of the foreign exchange act — was repealed in 2011. Since then a citizen of Ukraine, Kazakhstan or Vietnam buys a flat in Prague on exactly the same footing as a Czech: contract, entry in the katastr nemovitostí (land registry), keys.
The difficulty is not ownership rights, it is money. Buying with cash and buying with a mortgage are two very different conversations in terms of what will be asked of you.
LTV (loan to value) is the share of the flat's price the bank is willing to cover with a loan. The rest you bring yourself.
The Czech National Bank (ČNB) sets the upper boundaries, but in two different ways: some limits are binding, others have the status of a recommendation.
Binding limits:
Separately — a recommendation. From 1 April 2026 the ČNB recommends that on investment mortgages — where the flat is bought not to live in but to rent out — banks keep LTV no higher than 70% and DTI no higher than 7. Formally this is not law but a recommendation from the ČNB Bank Board to credit providers, though banks do follow such recommendations. DTI 7 means your total debt cannot exceed seven times your annual net income.
In practice it looks like this. A flat at 5,000,000 Kč: at 80% LTV the bank lends 4,000,000 Kč and you find 1,000,000 Kč yourself. At 70% LTV it is a 3,500,000 Kč loan and 1,500,000 Kč of your own.
A limit is a ceiling, not a promise. The bank is free to lend less — and to a foreigner it usually does.
An applicant without trvalý pobyt (permanent residence) is in practice approved for 60–70% of the value. The logic is simple and unpleasant: someone on temporary residence has to keep renewing their status, which means in theory they could leave. For the bank that is a risk stretching 20–30 years ahead.
What that means in numbers: for the same 5,000,000 Kč flat you will need not one million but 1,500,000–2,000,000 Kč of your own funds. This is exactly where most plans fall apart.
How people improve the situation:
Your form of employment affects the decision more than the size of the income itself.
HPP (hlavní pracovní poměr, a standard employment contract). The scenario a bank understands best: an employer's confirmation, a bank statement, an open-ended contract. The probation period normally has to be over — during the zkušební doba (probation) an application is often simply not taken up. A fixed-term contract is considered, but more cautiously, and the bank frequently asks for a history of renewals.
ŽL (živnostenský list, a trade licence for the self-employed). Here income means not turnover but whatever shows up in the daňové přiznání (tax return). And here is the catch: if you use paušální výdaje — flat-rate expenses — then on paper only a fraction of your turnover is left, and the bank works from that remainder. There are four flat rates: 80% (skilled trades, řemeslné živnosti, and agricultural production), 60% (other živnostenské podnikání, licensed trade activity), 40% (other independent activity and the liberal professions), 30% (rental income). Each rate has an absolute cap on the deduction, above which the flat rate no longer applies. The upshot is that between 20 and 70% of turnover remains in the return: on a turnover of 90,000 Kč a month with a 60% paušál that is 36,000 Kč, and with an 80% paušál it is 18,000 Kč. Banks neutralise this effect in different ways (some count a share of turnover), but the universal rule is: with a ŽL you need at least one and more often two completed tax returns.
A special case — paušální daň (the flat tax). An OSVČ (self-employed person) on the flat-tax regime does not file a daňové přiznání at all, so the requirement of one or two completed returns simply does not apply — and that does not mean a mortgage is off the table. In that case banks assess income from bank statements, the income records (evidence příjmů), an accountant's confirmation and the pásmo (band) of the flat tax you are in. Every bank has its own rules here, so comparing several of them makes even more sense.
How much of your income the payment may swallow. There is no single legal figure at the moment — the regulator has not set a hard limit on the payment-to-income ratio, and each bank uses its own methodology. The scheme is roughly this: from your net income they deduct the subsistence minimum for you and for each family member, deduct the payments on all existing loans, cards and credit lines (even unused ones), and the remainder must cover the mortgage payment with room to spare. On top of that, following the ČNB's recommendations and the EBA's guidelines on loan origination, banks usually recalculate the payment at a rate above the current one — checking your buffer in case credit gets more expensive. There is no direct legal obligation to run such a stress test: act 257/2016 Sb. (§86) requires an assessment of creditworthiness, while the test for a rate increase comes from supervisory practice.
The practical takeaway: before applying, close any credit cards and overdrafts you do not use. A 100,000 Kč limit on a card counts as debt to the bank even if you never activated it.
Advertising always quotes the lower boundary — the "from" rate. Reality is spread more widely.
Two different market indicators show this clearly: ČBA Hypomonitor, which measures loans actually drawn down, showed 4.90% in July 2026, while Hypoindex, which averages banks' list (shop-window) rates, showed 5.42% in August 2026. The first is what people actually signed; the second is what is posted on the websites. The advertised "from ...%" is yet a third figure, a marketing floor for the perfect client, and it sits below both averages.
What moves your personal rate down or up:
The difference between 4.9% and 5.4% on a 4,000,000 Kč loan is roughly a thousand crowns a month. Over 20 years the gap adds up seriously, so what is worth comparing is not "the rate from the advert" but concrete offers made on your own application.
The good news: the property acquisition tax has been abolished by act 386/2020 Sb. The four percent of the price the buyer used to pay is gone.
Everything else we count.
| Item | How much | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Registering ownership in the katastr nemovitostí | 2,000 Kč for a paper application, 1,600 Kč when filed electronically | The fee is charged per application for entry; electronic filing goes through the ČÚZK portal. With a mortgage, a separate application for the lien is filed as well |
| Property valuation (odhad) | Check with the bank | Required by the bank, paid by the applicant; some banks do it free as part of a promotion |
| Property insurance (pojištění nemovitosti) | To be confirmed | A mandatory condition, with vinkulace (assignment of the policy) in the bank's favour |
| Life insurance | To be confirmed | Often not mandatory, but tied to a reduced rate |
| Lawyer and escrow (úschova) | To be confirmed | Holding the money until title passes — with a lawyer, a notary or at a bank |
| Agency commission on the sale | 3–6% + 21% VAT | On a 5,000,000 Kč flat that is roughly 150,000 to 300,000 Kč excluding VAT, i.e. 181,500–363,000 Kč including VAT; more often it is already built into the asking price, but it is a matter of negotiation |
| Tax on a future sale | 0% after 10 years of ownership; other grounds for exemption exist too | The 10-year test applies to properties acquired from 2021 onwards. Exemption is possible sooner as well: if you lived in the flat for at least 2 years immediately before the sale, or if you put the proceeds towards your own housing needs — in the second case you must notify the tax office of your intention within the deadline for filing the return |
A separate word on timing. When an application for entry in the land registry is filed, a 20-day protective period applies: the registry notifies the owner that an application has arrived and only then makes the entry. It is a safeguard against fraudulent transfers, but you have to build it into the schedule — a deal does not close the same day.
A mortgage broker (hypoteční poradce) puts your application together and takes it round the banks. For a foreigner that is a tangible saving of time: they already know which banks currently accept a ŽL with a single tax return and which ones do not work with your type of residence.
About the "free" part, let us be straight. The broker is paid by the bank — up to 2% of the loan amount. On a 5,000,000 Kč loan that is around 100,000 Kč. You genuinely do not pay out of your own pocket, but the money is in the system, and that creates an obvious conflict of interest: different banks pay different commissions.
How to live with that:
This is the most persistent myth and it needs killing outright: the Czech Republic has no "golden visa" for property. Neither a flat for five million nor a house for twenty creates grounds for residence. The grounds for a residence permit — work, business, study, family reunification — are listed in act 326/1999 Sb., and property is not among them.
What buying does give you in paperwork terms: your own flat settles the question of the potvrzení o zajištění ubytování — the proof of accommodation that OAMP requires when you apply. Instead of a lease and the landlord's signature you bring an extract from the land registry. Convenient, but it is proof of housing, not a ground for residence in itself.
And do not forget to report a change of address. A holder of dlouhodobý or trvalý pobyt files this with OAMP under §98 of the same act, within 30 days for long-term residence and 30 working days for permanent residence. The "3 working days" rule from §93 is about something else: that is the notification of your place of stay after entering the territory, and it is usually filed on the foreigner's behalf by the landlord or the hotel. These are different obligations, and the penalties for breaching them are set out separately, so they should not be confused. Moving into a flat you own does not release you from the duty to report your address.
A simple benchmark for comparison is the rental market. According to the Deloitte Rent Index for the second quarter of 2026, the most expensive district is Prague 7 at 493 Kč per m² a month. Prague 9 is at 468 Kč per m², and it saw the fastest quarter-on-quarter growth in the city, +3.8%. Meanwhile the average rate across Prague fell over the quarter by 0.9%, to 462 Kč per m². For a 60 m² flat in Prague 9 that is about 28,000 Kč a month excluding utilities. Compare it with the mortgage payment at your LTV — sometimes the figures turn out closer than they seem, sometimes the opposite.
You can work out the payment and see how much of your own money your particular case needs in the calculator in the property section. It gives you a sense of the order of magnitude, but it is no substitute for the bank's answer: your type of residence, form of employment and current obligations change the picture a great deal.
If you want an exact calculation for your own situation, leave a request in the form below. The calculation is free, a financial adviser will get in touch, look at your inputs and assess what share of the value you can count on and which banks are worth applying to first. The final decision always rests with the bank.