Buying a house in Estonia: no transfer tax, one notary, one registration

First the order that is fixed on this site: in your first year you don't buy — you rent, you get to know Tallinn, Tartu or your island, and only then do you decide. This article is for the moment you have got that far. And then Estonia is pleasantly straightforward: one notary, one registration, and a cost list from which the biggest amount of almost every other country is simply missing.

One route: via the notary to the kinnistusraamat

The purchase of property in Estonia goes through the notary: who draws up the purchase agreement, checks its legality and files the entry with the kinnistusraamat, the Estonian land register. And there the same rule applies as in Germany and Austria, summed up by the Chamber of Notaries itself in one sentence: you become the owner on entry in the kinnistusraamat — not at the signature, not at the payment, not at the handover of the keys. If you don't yet live in Estonia, ask your notary about the possibilities of kaugtõestus — the notarial video authentication with which Estonia lives up to its digital reputation here too — and in any case sort out your ID card and e-services first, because everything in this country is signed digitally.

The bill: two items, no tax

The cost breakdown of the Chamber of Notaries counts exactly three lines: the notary fee (fixed by law, rising with the transaction value), the VAT on it, and the riigilõiv — the state fee for the entry. What is not among them is what was always the biggest item elsewhere in this series: a transfer tax of percentage points of the purchase price, which Estonia does not have. Whoever has just got used to the German 6.5% or the Dutch rates reads the final statement twice. The Chamber of Notaries has an online calculator with which you work out the costs to the euro in advance.

And after that: only maamaks — on the land, not on the house

The annual tax is called maamaks and is on the land, not on the building. The municipality sets the rate within statutory limits (for residential land 0.1 to 1 percent of the land value), and the proceeds go to the municipality. For the land under your own home there is a discount: since 2026 each municipality itself sets an amount (between € 5 and € 1,000) that comes off your assessment — the old national exemption by area has thereby been replaced. The condition is that you are registered at the address as a resident, so get that registration right immediately after the move. You pay by 31 March at the latest (and for larger amounts the remainder before 1 October), via the tax authority's e-environment.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 5 of 5 of the journey: the same steps, but applied to your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines monitored. See the whole journey to Estonia.