Buyer's guide
The words that turn up in a Lithuanian purchase before the apartment itself does: a reservation agreement, a preliminary agreement, a notarial deed, an extract from the Centre of Registers, the areas that are measured two different ways, and the taxes people find out about too late.
Each entry is written plainly and says who is responsible for what. None of it replaces your own notary or tax adviser.
Building management and common costsBuying a flat also buys a share of common property and the duty to look after it with the neighbours. Which of the three legal routes your building uses is answered by one certificate — worth seeing before the purchase.Buying in Lithuania as a foreignerA non-resident can buy a flat in Lithuania — the restrictions people have heard about apply to agricultural and forest land, not to flats. The hard part is paperwork and banking logistics, not the right to buy.Cadastral measurementA flat exists in law not when its walls are up but when it has been measured and registered as a separate object. That threshold explains much of how a new-build purchase is sequenced.Checking seizures and encumbrancesAn encumbrance on a flat is common and not always an obstacle. It becomes one when it is discovered after the money has moved. The check takes minutes and you can run it yourself.Costs of purchaseAround the price sits a small budget of its own. It is modest next to the value of the flat, but it falls in the same weeks and comes out of the same money already earmarked for the deposit.Energy performance certificateOne of the few documents about a flat produced by an independent expert to a single method. It lets you compare two flats — and it will not tell you what your heating will cost.Floor areas of a flatOne flat carries several different areas at the same time, and all of them are correct — they are simply measured by different rules. Until you know which figure is quoted, two flats cannot be compared.Guarantee for construction defectsResponsibility does not end when the keys change hands. Statutory guarantee periods apply to construction work, which means part of what appears later is the builder's problem rather than the owner's.Handover recordSigning at the notary and receiving the keys are two separate events. The second is recorded in a short document, and that document later decides whose problem every small fault is.Mortgage and creditA bank decides about the borrower and about the flat, separately. Until both decisions exist, every date in the purchase is a forecast — which is why the deadlines are set backwards from the bank's last step.Preliminary agreement in LithuaniaA promise to buy, not a purchase. Nothing changes hands, yet almost every later disagreement is settled by this text — which is why it is the cheapest document to have checked and the most expensive one to rush.Property taxes in LithuaniaThe taxes around a flat are not one tax but several obligations arising at different moments. This article describes how each works and which statute sets the rate you need to look up.Register extract (Registrų centras)The one document that describes the flat in the state's words rather than the seller's. It shows the owner, every restriction and the official data — and anyone can order it without asking the seller.Reservation agreement in LithuaniaThe reservation is the first paper anyone signs about a specific flat, and usually the only one signed without reading to the end. It buys time, not property: nothing moves in the register at this stage.Storage rooms and parkingA storage room and a parking space can be set up in three entirely different legal ways. Which one applies decides whether they can be sold separately, who pays for them, and what the register shows.The notarial actA flat in Lithuania changes hands in notarial form. The notary is not a witness with a stamp: the office queries the registers itself, answers for the legality of what it certifies, and explains the deed to both sides.
Ask about this building
Two sentences are enough: what you want to know about the building on Gerosios Vilties street, and how to reach you. The answer comes from the person who works on this project. Where nothing has been settled yet, you will be told that instead of a number that later turns out to be wrong.