Buying a new-build flat from a Polish developer

The act of 20 May 2021 on the protection of the rights of buyers of dwellings and single-family houses and on the Developer Guarantee Fund took effect on 1 July 2022 and replaced a 2011 statute. Projects already selling under the old law kept it for two years, so contracts signed up to 30 June 2024 could still fall under the old regime. Anything you sign now is under the 2021 act.

The act is one-directional: a term of the contract less favourable to the buyer than the statute is void, and the statutory provision applies in its place. You do not have to negotiate the protections in this guide into the contract. They are there whatever the contract says.

The developer must run a mieszkaniowy rachunek powierniczy — a housing escrow account — for each project, and keep it until the last buyer's rights have been transferred. The bank records payments and withdrawals separately for each buyer, and on request it tells you the dates and amounts on your own account.

There are two kinds. An open account releases money to the developer in tranches as construction progresses, and the bank checks the progress before it pays out. A closed account holds everything until ownership has been transferred to you, which is the stronger protection and the rarer arrangement.

The account has to stay in place for as long as the project runs. A bank may terminate the agreement only for serious reasons, on 60 days' notice, and the developer then has 60 days to open an equivalent account elsewhere. If it fails to, you can withdraw from the contract.

The developer must draw up a harmonogram — a schedule setting out the stages of the project, the estimated percentage of total costs each stage carries, and the completion date for each.

Two numbers in the statute do the work. The schedule must contain at least four stages, and no single stage may account for more than 25% or less than 10% of the project's total costs. That is what stops a developer collecting 80% of the price at the foundations.

You pay after a stage has been completed, not before, and the amount depends on how far the work has actually got rather than on what the calendar says. The developer has to notify you, on paper or another durable medium, that a stage is finished.

The Deweloperski Fundusz Gwarancyjny is a national fund, administered by the Insurance Guarantee Fund, financed by contributions the developer pays on each payment you make. The statute caps the rate at 1% for an open account and 0.1% for a closed one; the regulation in force since 1 July 2022 sets it at 0.45% and 0.1%. The developer calculates and pays it within 7 days of your payment, and never later than the day the bank releases money to it.

You do not pay the contribution directly. It is priced into what the developer charges, which is one reason a closed-account project can be marginally cheaper.

What the Fund refunds is money paid into an open account. It pays out when a bankruptcy judge refuses or ends the continuation of the project, when a receiver or administrator withdraws from your contract, when you withdraw on statutory grounds and the developer does not return the money within 30 days, and when the bank holding the escrow account fails beyond the deposit guarantee. A closed account works differently, because the money is still in the bank until you own the flat.

Before you sign anything, including a reservation agreement, the developer must deliver a prospekt informacyjny with its annexes, free of charge, on a durable medium, and on paper at the sales office if you ask. Its content follows a template annexed to the statute: the land, its land register number, planning permissions, what may be built nearby, the schedule, the escrow arrangements, the plan of the flat and the standard of finish. Changes come as an annex to the prospectus.

Since 11 July 2025 there is a second, more useful obligation. From the day sales start, the developer must run a website carrying the general part of the prospectus and the price per square metre of every flat offered, the price of storage rooms and parking spaces where those are separate, and any other payment you would owe — all inclusive of VAT. Prices must be updated on the day they change, with the date shown and the earlier figures kept, and every advertisement must give the address of that page.

The teeth are in one sentence: where the published price differs from the price offered when the contract is concluded, you may demand that the contract be made at whichever price is more favourable to you. Failing to publish is a practice infringing collective consumer interests, which puts the competition authority in the picture.

The same data goes to the government daily. Developers transmit it once every 24 hours to the minister responsible for digitisation, who publishes it on the national open data portal as high-value data — which is where mScanner's primary-market price data comes from.

The handover inspection comes after the occupancy permit becomes final, and it is carried out in your presence. A protokół is drawn up, and you enter into it every defect you have found. Take the time, and take someone who knows what to look at.

From the signing of that protokół the developer has 14 days to tell you, on paper or another durable medium, that it accepts the defects or that it refuses and why. If it says nothing in 14 days, the defects count as accepted. It then has 30 days from the protokół to remove the accepted defects.

If it misses that deadline despite due care, it must set a new date with reasons for the delay, and the new date may not cause you excessive inconvenience. If it misses that one too, or names no date at all, you set a deadline yourself; once that lapses you may have the defects put right at the developer's cost.

A wada istotna — a material defect — is a separate track. You may refuse to take the flat at all if you find one and the developer refuses to acknowledge it in the protokół. The parties then set a new handover date so the developer can fix it. If you refuse a second time you have to back your refusal with a building expert's opinion, applying for it within a month. If the expert confirms the material defect you may withdraw from the contract and the developer pays for the opinion; if the expert finds none, the opinion is at your expense.

• 14 days: the developer accepts or rejects your listed defects — silence means acceptance
• 30 days: accepted defects removed, counted from the protokół
• Refusal of handover is available only for a material defect the developer will not acknowledge
• One month: the window to apply for a building expert's opinion after a second refusal

The act lists twelve grounds for withdrawal. Where the contract is missing statutory elements, contradicts the prospectus, or the prospectus was never delivered or was wrong, you have 30 days from concluding the contract to withdraw. Where the developer has no mortgage creditor's consent to sell you the flat free of the charge, the window is 60 days.

Late completion is handled differently and more usefully. Before you can withdraw for non-transfer within the contractual deadline you must give the developer a further 120 days; if that passes you may withdraw, and you keep your claim to the contractual penalty for the delay.

Withdrawal costs you nothing. A clause allowing you to withdraw against payment of a sum is not permitted, the contract is treated as never concluded, you bear no costs of withdrawing, and the developer must return the money released to it from the escrow account within 30 days.

If the developer goes under, the escrow account and the Guarantee Fund are the two layers. Money still in the account has not become the developer's. Money already released from an open account is what the Fund exists to refund, in the insolvency situations the statute lists. Once the Fund pays you, your claim against the developer passes to it by operation of law.

After you own the flat, defects are the ordinary business of the Civil Code warranty. The act sends physical and legal defects to the Civil Code rules on rękojmia, and for real property the seller's liability runs for five years from handover.

The umowa deweloperska is a notarial deed, and unusually the bill is shared: the notary's fee for everything done in connection with concluding it, including the copies issued, and the court fees in the land-register proceedings, fall on the developer and the buyer in equal parts.

There is no PCC on a purchase from a developer, because the price already carries VAT. The separate guide on taxes and fees sets out the rates and where 23% appears instead of 8%.

This page describes the position as at 19 August 2026 and explains the rules in general terms. It is not legal advice about a specific purchase. The act has been amended several times since 2021, and further changes are already enacted with later commencement dates.

• Act of 20 May 2021 on the protection of buyers of dwellings and the Developer Guarantee Fund, consolidated text Dz.U. 2026 poz. 880 — articles 6–10, 19a, 19b, 20–22, 24, 40, 41, 43, 44, 48, 49 and 76
• Regulation of the Minister of Development and Technology of 21 June 2022 on the Fund contribution rates (Dz.U. 2022 poz. 1341)
• Law on notaries (Prawo o notariacie), article 92 §9, on entering the buyer's claim in the land register
• Civil Code, article 568 §1, on the five-year warranty period for real property