Legal effects of Registration

A) Internal effects: effects to the right itself and the entitlement

a) Registration and the process of transfer/acquisition of property rights

Registration of property rights in Latvia is a constitutive action and the Land register laws states, that it is compulsory (art. 1).

Also Civil law (art. 993) states, that the delivery of immovable property does not of itself establish the ownership rights of the acquirer of the immovable property; these shall be acquired only on the basis of legal acquisition and the registration of a completed deed thereof in the Land Register.

Any alienation of immovable property, and in general also any change in the owners thereof, must be registered in the Land Register.

Similarly, each immovable property, which is not an appurtenance to another such property, must be registered in the name of the new owner as a new mortgageable parcel.

Still there are no immediate sanctions for failing to register an acquired property right apart from increased state duty (coefficient 1,5 from the original amount) if a person submits the applications later than 6 months after the document.

b) Effects to legitimize the owner

Civil law states that only a person that has its rights corroborated into Land Register is considered as the lawful owner of the given property. Therefore, registration in Land Register serves as a direct evidence of the right in rem.

B) External effects: effects to third parties

Registration of property rights has an effect regarding third parties, since in accordance with Civil law only such persons shall be recognised to be the owners of immovable property, as are registered in the Land Register as such owners.

Until registration in the Land Register, acquirers of immovable property shall not have any rights against third parties, they may not use any of the priority rights associated with ownership, and they must recognise as valid any acts pertaining to such immovable property by the person who is indicated, pursuant to the Land Register, as the owner of such property. However, they have the right, not only to request compensation for all acts done in bad faith by the earlier owner pertaining to the immovable property, but also to request that the latter take all the appropriate steps to register the passing of the immovable property in the Land Register.

C) Different kinds of registration and its effects

An entry in Land register constitutes that very it right in question and corroborates it against third parties irrelevant of class of title (only ownership) or type of an entry.

In addition, Land Register law states, that Land Registers are available to everyone and the entries are publicly reliable. Everyone can look into folio to find out information about corroborated rights/owners/other information regarding the given property. Land Register also contains information from different registers where the information is not considered as publicly reliable per se, but when written in Land register it becomes so, so in essence all information in the folio has acquired public reliability and can be used to rely on Land register information in making a decision or just getting information about the property.