How to buy a house in Slovenia, step by step

The Slovenian Constitution (art. 68) lets foreigners acquire property on the terms set by law or treaty, and the Ministry of Justice sorts foreign buyers into three main groups:

• Citizens and companies of the EU, the EFTA/EEA states and the OECD buy exactly as Slovenians do, with no reciprocity check. Germans, Austrians, Italians, Swiss, Britons and Americans all belong here: US and UK citizens can buy.
• EU candidate countries (North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia) first need a positive reciprocity decision from the Ministry of Justice.
• Everyone else, China and Russia included, cannot buy, except by inheritance and subject to reciprocity.

Foreign buyers are an ordinary part of the market. According to FURS figures reported by Bloomberg Adria, foreigners bought 1,556 second-hand properties in Slovenia in 2025, 127 of them Germans, 113 Austrians and 95 Italians; 202 went through the Koper tax office, which covers Koper, Izola, Piran and Sežana.

Two limits apply to everyone, Slovenians included: agricultural land has its own procedure with pre-emption rights, and in some areas the state or the municipality has first refusal (see step 2).

Under art. 51(3) of the Financial Administration Act (ZFU), a person with no residence in Slovenia who acquires a taxable asset there files form DR-02 for a tax number (davčna številka) before becoming the owner.

• Any FURS tax office will do, with a valid identity document.
• A representative (pooblaščenec) with a power of attorney can file it for you, so the trip is not compulsory.
• The FURS description of the procedure says the certificate is handed over on the spot or posted within a few days, with no administrative fee. That description dates from 2018: confirm it before you count on it.

Apply as soon as you are serious about a house; a representative can deal with it while you negotiate.

Slovenia's public registers are online and mostly free to consult. Read them before you sign anything or pay a deposit.

• Land register (zemljiška knjiga). Owner, mortgages, easements and the plomba, the mark that a procedure is already pending on the property. Extracts are free on esodisce.si, but since July 2026 access requires a SI-PASS account (smsPASS or Rekono).
• Cadastre (GURS). Parcels and buildings are on the public viewer, registered sale prices in the ETN register (our summary: real sale prices). Cadastre and land register do not always agree: the cadastre can record a single dwelling where an advertisement offers several flats, and units never formally split into condominium ownership (etažna lastnina) cannot be sold separately.
• Use permit (uporabno dovoljenje). A building that needed a building permit needs a use permit before anyone uses it; if it is missing, the price has to absorb the time of legalising it. Legalisation applications can be filed until 31/12/2030 (GZ-1, art. 143), with simpler routes for buildings built with a permit before 01/01/2005 (art. 147), single-family houses built with a permit before 01/06/2018 (art. 149) and much older buildings (art. 150).
• Energy performance certificate (energetska izkaznica). The energy class must appear in sale advertisements, houses included; the certificate is valid for 10 years, so check its date.
• Agricultural land. The seller publishes the offer for 15 days on the administrative unit's notice board and on eUprava, buyers accept in writing within 15 days, and the buyer asks for approval within 30 days. Approval is refused if the statutory order of pre-emption holders was not respected: with farmland attached, holders with priority come before you.
• Public pre-emption rights. Under nature, water, cultural-heritage or planning law the state or the municipality may have first refusal. With the parks and reserves along the coast, check it every time.

Estate agency is a regulated profession (ZNPosr). The register of agents, the Imenik nepremičninskih posrednikov, lists 2,911 people, and an agency must be insured for at least €150,000 per claim and €350,000 a year.

• You pay commission only under your own written contract (art. 5(3)). It must list the terms the law requires (art. 13), lasts at most 9 months, can be ended by either side at any time unless that breaches good faith (art. 26), and commission falls due only once the sale is concluded (art. 25).
• There is no legal cap any more: the Constitutional Court struck down the ceiling (UL 76/2025). A court can still reduce an excessive commission (OZ art. 849).
• On the coast, the listings we counted most often ask the buyer either for a share of the agency fee, usually worded as a reimbursement of part of the seller's selling costs, or to take over the seller's transfer tax; many say nothing, so ask before the visit.
• That reimbursement wording is exposed to nullity: art. 5(5) voids clauses of the sale contract that contradict the rule that only the agent's own client pays. The sound form is a written agency contract between you and the agent.
• An agent paid by both sides must stay impartial and declare conflicts of interest in writing (arts. 20 and 21).

TriesteVillas does not act as an agent in Slovenia today. When it starts, during 2027, the licensed part of the work will be done by local agencies whose agents are entered in the Imenik, with TriesteVillas bringing marketing and international promotion.

A contract that transfers real estate must be in writing (Code of Obligations, OZ art. 52), and the preliminary contract (predpogodba) follows the same form. If it contains the essential terms of the final contract it binds: should the other side refuse to sign, a court can order it, if the claim is brought within 6 months of the date agreed (art. 33).

Do not assume the deposit (ara) works as it does at home. Unless the contract says otherwise:

• the buyer cannot withdraw by forfeiting it, nor the seller by paying back double (art. 64);
• if the buyer defaults, the seller chooses between enforcement with damages and keeping the deposit; if the seller defaults, the buyer chooses between enforcement, damages plus repayment, or double the deposit (art. 65);
• a court may reduce an excessive deposit (art. 65);
• the deposit becomes the price of withdrawing only if a right to withdraw is expressly agreed (art. 68).

So write down what the deposit is for, and pay it by bank transfer: the anti-money-laundering act (ZPPDFT-2, art. 74) bans cash above a set threshold, deposits included.

This is the largest difference from Italy and Germany, where the sale requires a notarial deed. In Slovenia the contract is a private document, drafted by a lawyer, a notary or the agency, and the law reserves one step of the contract to the notary: authenticating the seller's signature on the zemljiškoknjižno dovolilo, the consent that lets the land register transfer the property (Notaries Act, ZN art. 64). In most cases the land-register filing passes through a notary too (step 6).

• A notary who only authenticates that signature does not answer for the content of the contract, and must say so: liability follows only from drawing up a notarial deed (notarski zapis). For an ordinary sale between unrelated parties we have found no obligation to use one; confirm it with the notary.
• The notary authenticates only after FURS confirms that the tax on the contract is settled (on a resale, the transfer tax); without that confirmation, FURS states, there is no authentication and no registration.
• Where Italian is also an official language, notaries draft in both languages if a party uses Italian (art. 13).
• On a typical purchase the compulsory notary and court fees run to hundreds of euros, not thousands; a full notarial deed or notarial escrow costs extra. The purchase cost calculator and purchase costs compared do the sums.

The consequence: the due diligence is yours. A Slovenian lawyer working for you is not a luxury here; it does the job a notary does in Italy.

Resale: the transfer tax (DPN) is 2% of the price. The seller owes it by law; the contract can shift it to the buyer, and coastal listings often do. Even then FURS treats the seller as the debtor, and late interest and enforcement fall on the seller if the buyer does not pay.

• The seller files the return within 15 days of signing, at the tax office where the property lies; the assessment is payable within 30 days of delivery.
• The base is everything the seller receives, debts of the old owner taken over included. If the price is below market, FURS may set its own figure, and the taxpayer can answer with an expert's report. The GURS generalised value is no longer the base (Constitutional Court, U-I-168/15).

New build: VAT instead. A building sold before first occupation, or within 2 years of it, by a VAT-registered business carries VAT instead of DPN: the standard rate, or the reduced rate for a flat or single-family house meant as a permanent home and within the limits on the usable area of the habitable rooms in the FURS guide to VAT rates (wellness and sports facilities do not qualify). A new house sold by a private person pays DPN, and a substantial renovation can bring a company's sale back into VAT (EU Court, C-239/22), to be judged case by case.

When you sell. Capital gains tax falls in steps every 5 years of ownership and reaches zero after 15. A DPN you took over counts in your acquisition cost. The exemption for the seller's own home requires registered residence and at least 3 years of living there, so a non-resident rarely qualifies.

If you let it, Slovenia taxes long-term rent at a flat final rate, non-residents included; short-term letting has its own limits (short-term rental rules).

The last step is the entry in the land register, which records you as the owner.

• Filing. The application usually goes in electronically through eSodstvo, lodged by the notary, a lawyer or the agency; in the last two cases the paper originals reach a notary within 3 working days for conversion. Only an oral application at the court registry, for your own entry, avoids the notary, at an extra fee.
• Priority. On filing, the plomba appears and applications are decided in order of arrival. A provisional entry (predznamba) protects a buyer whose document is still incomplete.
• Court fee. It rises in steps with the contract price (ZST-1, tariff 91011) and must be paid within 8 days, or the application counts as withdrawn.
• How long. According to the courts' portal, a few days from assignment to the clerk to the decision, about a month until it is final. The tax assessment comes first, and we found no published average for how long FURS takes.
• Paying safely. A notary can hold the price on an account separate from the notary's own assets, out of reach of the notary's creditors, and release it on conditions written into a notarial deed.

Afterwards. Within 15 days you file the property-tax return (davek od premoženja), and the municipality must be told for the land-use charge (NUSZ). Both apply to foreign owners, and the deduction for a family home does not cover a non-resident's second home; first owners of a new building pay no property tax for 10 years, and buyers of a new flat can ask for a NUSZ exemption for 5. The amounts depend on municipal decrees, which we have not yet read for the coast and the Karst.

Owning a house requires no residence. If you do stay, these are the rules we have read, which are those for EU citizens; US and UK citizens follow different residence rules that this guide does not yet cover.

• Registration. An EU citizen staying longer than 90 days registers at any administrative unit (upravna enota) with a valid ID, health insurance (the European Health Insurance Card is enough), sufficient means and a purpose (any other justified reason is accepted); the card is valid for 5 years. Once you settle, residence is registered within 8 days (e-uprava).
• Health care. Residents join the compulsory insurance; since 01/01/2024 the complementary insurance has been replaced by a compulsory health contribution (OZP). More in schools and healthcare.
• Tax residence. More than 183 days a year, or your habitual abode or centre of interests in Slovenia, makes you tax resident on worldwide income (FURS). Planning half the year here? Take advice before you buy.
• Mortgages. Since 01/07/2023 the Bank of Slovenia's rules bind every bank lending in Slovenia: a cap on repayments relative to income, a minimum left after the instalment, recommended loan-to-value ceilings (higher for the borrower's own home), no maximum term. We found no published source on Slovenian mortgages for non-residents: the realistic route is your own funds or a bank at home, to be checked case by case.
• Tax at home. Slovenia taxes rent from a Slovenian property whatever your residence. Italian tax residents also owe IVIE on property abroad, less the Slovenian property tax paid; how Austria and Germany relieve the double charge is a question for a tax adviser at home.