Buying out company flats – find out the details!

Although company housing construction is slowly fading from memory, quite a lot of such flats still exist. Suffice it to say that a year ago 190 thousand families lived in them. Over time, however, their number is starting to shrink – mainly thanks to preferential buy-out terms. Is it worth taking advantage of them? Let's find out!

A flat for 5% of its value

Why would many people like to buy out a company flat? The answer is very simple – you can save quite a lot of money. Even up to 95% of the value of the whole property. Of course, not always. The basic discount is much smaller, but it gradually increases over time.

When we decide to buy out a company flat, two basic factors affecting its price are taken into account. These are:

• length of service at the company that owns the flat,
• the number of years the flat was rented to the particular person.

Each year worked means a reduction of 6 per cent. Each year of tenancy – a further 3 per cent. One important detail should be stressed here, though: there is no such thing as a free lunch. The maximum reduction can be "only" 95 per cent. In practice this means the possibility of taking over a flat for next to nothing. Whether this possibility is merely theoretical is a separate question, which we will come to shortly.

In the context of the 95 per cent reduction, it is also worth mentioning pensioners, disability pensioners and their widows and widowers. For them, a reduction to 5 per cent of the value of the flat applies automatically, regardless of the actual number of years worked at the company or of registered residence in the company flat.

Which companies have company flats?

The answer to this question is fairly simple. It is mainly large state employers such as PKP and the State Forests, but also the Polish Army (although in the case of the State Forests and the Army the maximum discounts are lower than the 95 per cent mentioned). Mainly, but not only. In principle, this covers flats owned by State Treasury companies and by some enterprises in which the Polish state holds a stake. Interestingly, although company housing construction accounts for a fraction of a per cent compared with the rest of developer investment and can be considered to have almost disappeared, the word "almost" matters.

If we look at data from Statistics Poland, it turns out that in 2012 more than five hundred such flats were built. Most were built in the Warmian-Masurian (168), Lower Silesian (93), Lubusz (87) and Masovian (84) voivodeships.

READ ALSO – SERVICE FLATS FOR POLICE OFFICERS

How to buy a company flat?

This question seems fundamental. The point is that the buy-out itself is not always possible – first the company itself must decide to sell the flat. Only once such a decision has been made does the buy-out process become possible, and the company sends the tenants information about the right of pre-emption.

At this stage, tenants occupying a company flat have the right to submit an application to buy. If they do so by the stated deadline and meet all formal requirements, the company that owns the flat will have 30 days to reply.

What documents are needed to buy out a company flat?

We have mentioned formalities. One of them, a very important one, is settling any rent arrears. This is key, since their presence can make it impossible to buy the flat on preferential terms. But that is not all. The remaining formalities mainly involve gathering certain documents, such as the lease agreement, the certificate of registered residence or the decision allocating the flat itself.

In some cases additional certificates will also be required. For example, pensioners will have to provide the decision granting the right to draw a pension. Additional documents will also be needed for widows, widowers or heirs – in such cases a short-form copy of the death certificate and (for widows) a short-form copy of the marriage certificate must also be supplied. For heirs it also matters whether they lived in the same flat as the employee to whom the flat was allocated.