When your landlord sells the flat or dies

If your landlord sells the flat you rent, or dies, your lease doesn't end. The Civil Code passes it to the new owner as it stands, with the same rent, the same end date and the same rules on notice. What changes is who your landlord is, and so who you pay and who gives back your deposit. This page goes through a sale, a landlord's death and, briefly, what happens when a tenant dies. It isn't legal advice: free legal help lists who can look at your own case.

Does a sale end your lease?

No. When the owner changes, the rights and duties from the lease pass to the new owner.¹ Neither side can give notice just because the owner changed, and for a flat you live in, your landlord has no right to end the lease for that reason at all: a clause saying otherwise is disregarded.²

The Supreme Court has said that the new owner steps into the lease with all its terms, from the rent and how it's worked out to when it's paid.³ So a lease with no end date stays that way, a lease with an end date runs to the same day, and you don't need to sign anything new. If the new owner offers you a new lease, read it as you would any lease: signing it replaces the terms you have.

There's one limit. Promises in your lease that go beyond what the law requires of a landlord bind a new owner only if they knew about them.¹ Give the new owner a copy of your lease early, and keep proof that you did.

Who do you pay rent to after a sale?

Keep paying as you did until the former owner tells you about the sale or the new owner proves it to you. Until then, rent you pay to the former owner in good faith counts as paid. After that, you pay the new owner.³

• Check the land register. The cadastre's online viewer (Nahlížení do katastru nemovitostí) is free, but since the end of 2025 it shows who owns a flat only after you sign in with an electronic identity through Identita občana, such as a Czech bank's BankID.⁴
• Ask for the new account in writing, from the new owner, with the proof. Be wary of an e-mail from someone you don't know giving a new account for the rent.
• If you can't tell who to pay, through no fault of yours, you can place the rent in court custody (soudní úschova) instead. That counts as paying.⁵

What happens to your deposit?

The Civil Code has no special rule for the deposit after a sale. The duty to return it is part of the lease, so it passes with the lease.¹ The Supreme Court has held that whoever is the landlord when the lease ends must return the deposit, even though it was paid to the former owner. It decided this under the old Civil Code, and has since cited the decision when reading the current Code's rule on a change of owner.⁶³

Write to the new owner when the flat changes hands, saying how much deposit you paid and when, with proof. Getting your deposit back explains what can come off it and how to claim it when the lease ends.

What can a new owner change, and what can't they?

A new owner is your landlord like the last one, with the same rights and no more.

If a new owner gives notice to live in the flat and then doesn't use it for that within a month of you leaving, they must let it to you again or pay for the harm.¹⁰ Notice and eviction goes through every reason and your two months to ask a court to review a notice, and the rent increase check tests a proposed rise.

Do you get the chance to buy the flat?

Sometimes. When the owner of a whole building divides it into units, a tenant of a flat has the right to buy their unit first (předkupní právo) when it's sold for the first time. The right lapses if you don't accept the offer within six months. It doesn't apply if the tenant is a company.¹¹ Any later sale of the flat comes with no such right.

What happens if your landlord dies?

The lease goes on. A landlord's property, flats they let included, passes to their heirs, and a change of owner doesn't end a lease.¹²¹ Until the inheritance is confirmed, the estate is managed by an administrator or executor the landlord named, or else by the heirs.¹³

• Who handles it: the probate is run by a notary the court appoints (soudní komisař), at the court for the landlord's last registered address.¹⁴ You can write to that notary with a copy of your lease, so your lease and your deposit are known.
• Rent: ask whoever manages the estate, in writing, where to pay it. If you can't tell who to pay, court custody counts as paying.⁵
• Repairs and the service charges: ask whoever manages the estate.

Once the heirs are confirmed, they're your landlord, with the same limits as any new owner.

What happens to the lease when the tenant dies?

If the lease wasn't joint, it passes to a member of the tenant's household who lived in the flat on the day of the death and has no flat of their own. For anyone other than the spouse, registered partner, parent, brother or sister, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, child or grandchild, it passes only if the landlord agreed. If several people qualify, it passes to all of them together, and a descendant, such as a child or grandchild, comes first.¹⁵

Subletting and flatmates explains who counts as a member of your household, and what your landlord must be told.

• How long: a lease that passed this way ends after two years at the latest, unless the person was 70 or older on the day it passed. For someone under 18, it ends at the latest when they turn 20, unless agreed otherwise.¹⁵
• Saying no: each person can tell the landlord in writing within a month of the death that they won't carry on.¹⁵
• Deposit: if the tenant who died hadn't paid one, the landlord can ask for it.¹⁶
• Spouses: if a married couple rented the family home together and one dies, the other stays the tenant.¹⁷

Otherwise the lease passes to the heirs. The landlord, and the heir, can then give two months' notice without a reason within three months of learning the key facts, and the heir within six months of the death at the latest.¹⁸ The people who lived with the tenant answer, together with the heir, for debts from the lease from before the death. If no heir is known within six months of the death, the landlord can clear the flat, which ends the lease, and store the things at the heir's cost.¹⁸

Sources

1. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2221. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2222 and §2224. ↩ ↩²

3. Supreme Court, 28 Cdo 270/2019, 2 April 2019. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre, Nahlížení do katastru nemovitostí and access to the viewer, 8 April 2026. ↩

5. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §1953. ↩ ↩²

6. Supreme Court, 26 Cdo 652/2013, 29 May 2013, under the old Civil Code. ↩

7. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2288. ↩

8. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2248 and §2249. ↩

9. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2219. ↩

10. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2289. ↩

11. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §1187. ↩

12. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §1475. ↩

13. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §1677. ↩

14. Special Court Proceedings Act (Act 292/2013 Coll.), §98 and §100. ↩

15. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2279 and §2280. ↩ ↩² ↩³

16. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2281. ↩

17. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §766. ↩

18. Civil Code (Act 89/2012 Coll.), §2282, §2283 and §2284. ↩ ↩²