Buyer’s advanced instructions

The first step in buying a property is, of course, to choose an appropriate property on sale. The market has a lot of supply, but once you really start to go over the properties available, you will quickly find a property suitable for you. Buying a forest property is a big investment and properties should not be bought on a whim.

Choose a property according to your budget for procuring a forest property, a location where you are willing to look after your property/have someone else do it for you, and what the other values are, in addition to forestry ones, that you would want your property to have. You should select several properties for consideration so that you can find the one truly most suitable for you. Another reason for selecting several interesting properties is that it provides you with an accurate understanding of the pricing of different properties and their market value. You should always rely on professionals when purchasing a forest property. The brokers in the Metsätilat.fi property transaction chain are all forestry sector professionals whose advertising can be trusted. The sales adverts will mention everything that is relevant and important when purchasing a forest property.

In all forest properties marketed by the Metsätilat.fi property transaction chain, all potential buyers have an equal amount of time to visit the property being sold. There is a deadline for submitting a purchase offer for the property, which ensures that no-one can purchase the property before the offer period has ended. The offer period is marked in the preliminary information for each property. However, Metsätilat.fi uses for some properties a deadline-free offering procedure in which the broker presents the offers received to the seller in the order the offers arrive.

The property’s address and, if necessary, the more detailed directions to the property are listed in the sales advertisement and the broker managing the property can also help you. Using a mobile device, you can review the information in the sales brochure and compare it to what you see when visiting the property.

Most often, a forest property assessment has been made of the forest property for the selling process and the assessment is usually attached to the sale advertisement. From the forest property assessment, you can clearly see what kinds of trees grow in which compartment. This helps illustrate things such as the forest property’s current and future felling possibilities.

When visiting the property, you should pay attention to the other values of the property, not just the felling possibilities. A forest property always has diversity, landscape and recreational value which are something an increasing number of forest property owners deem to be as valuable as the timber trade values.

You should check the borders of the area being sold because you must be aware of how the property meets the borders of the neighbouring properties and which actions or potential factors limiting the use of the area there can be. Familiarise yourself with the accessibility of the property, i.e. the roads and their maintenance, the storing conditions for timber, and the prevalence of electric lines and other structures.

The broker has investigated the property being sold and has presented all the important information in the sale advertisement, but the buyer also has the obligation to request information concerning the property being sold. If the property has something that the buyer should have taken into account and been aware of or which should have been taken into account when submitting the offer, they cannot cite such a matter at a later stage. Therefore, it is important that you familiarise yourself with the property’s official information and the property itself before submitting an offer.

The broker has verified the property’s true owner who is entitled to sell the property. That is a matter you do not need to worry about.

The relevant easements are in the sale brochure. The easement information is based n the cadastral certificate, which includes all the registered rights, encumbrances and restrictions on use concerning the property.

The broker has investigated the encumbrances (e.g. mortgages), other possible registered rights, and administration restrictions related to the property. This information is presented in the property’s brochure information.

The cadastral certificate is usually attached to the sale brochure. It includes the property’s basic information and how the property is formed. If an unseparated parcel has at some point been separated from the property, but the unseparated parcel has not yet been made a property of its own, that too will be visible in the cadastral certificate. Otherwise, the cadastral certificate includes the easements, rights of use and restrictions of use encumbering or serving the property, and the shares in common areas and special benefits. In practice, this means the rights of way and the shares in the common waters and land areas.

A map of the area being sold shows the location of the property and how and by what the property is bordered. For example, the property can be bordered by a nature conservation area, an area the uses of which are restricted with zoning or an area the use of which is otherwise limited and whose impact can reach the property being sold and thus affect the property’s uses.

The broker for the property has in the sale advertisement indicated the zoning situation and the zone valid in the area. It is also important to inspect whether there is new zoning being planned for the area or if the old zoning is to be adjusted. You only need to ask the property’s broker about the matter or contact the body responsible for the municipality’s zoning. Zoning is used to rule on how the area is used and the zoning projects usually take years, which is why it is important to know the current or future plans for the area.

Submitting an offer via the Metsätilat.fi website is easy. The buyer only needs to fill in the ready fields and if they still have questions about submitting an offer, the potential buyer can always contact the broker for the property to ask for help for submitting the offer.

The offer is binding for the party submitting it, but the seller cannot, for example, use legal proceedings to demand the potential buyer to buy the property. If, in a situation like this, the party submitting the offer were to withdraw their offer after the seller has already accepted the offer, the seller would be entitled to charge the potential buyer for the reasonable costs caused by the withdrawal.

Offer content:

Personal information

The offer contains, of course, the personal information of the party submitting the offer. The personal information of the submitting party will be saved in the joint customer information register of the Metsätilat.fi property transaction chain and they will only be processed until the property being sold has been sold or the offer has been rejected. If the seller accepts the submitting party’s offer, their personal information will be stored for 5 years after the broking commission has ended. If you cannot submit an offer yourself, you can ask some other legally competent person to submit it for you.

Price and conditions

The offer can, in addition to the price, include other conditions, similarly to a purchase offer for a flat, for example. If, for instance, you are not certain whether you will be granted a loan to purchase the property, the granting of the loan will be recorded as a condition for the purchase offer. In this case, the purchase offer must be conditional and the offer is valid only if the bank grants the loan. Other conditions can concern other things as well, such as the potential buyer wanting to include a particular movable object in the property into the sale.  The potential buyer can protect their important rights by submitting a conditional offer. However, you must remember that the offer is not binding on the seller before the seller has accepted the offer. The seller has all the rights to accept or reject any and all offers.

Validity

The commercial practice commonly used in the Metsätilat.fi chain is the offer procedure. There are two different versions of the offer procedure, a time-limited offer procedure and an offer procedure with no time limit.

In the time-limited offer procedure, an offer on the property can be submitted until the set deadline. The broker managing the property gives all the offers received to the seller at the same time and the seller makes the decision to accept or reject after the offer deadline. In this version, the validity period of the offer must be set to be 7 days after the set offer-submitting deadline so that the seller will have a reasonable timeframe in which to go over the offers received.

An offer procedure with no time limit has not set a deadline by which an offer on the property must be submitted. However, you should submit your offer as soon as possible so that it can have enough time to be processed by the seller before they make the decision to sell. The broker presents the offers received to the seller in the order they arrive, immediately after the offers have been submitted. We still recommend giving the offer a validity period of 7 days so that the seller will have a reasonable timeframe in which to consider accepting or rejecting the offer.

An offer can be submitted at any time during the validity period, in which case the offer will be deemed to be valid indefinitely.

As stated above, the seller is entitled to sell the property to anyone they want. The seller goes over the offer on the property together with the seller and decides whether to accept the offer. The seller is also entitled to reject any and all offers if they consider none of them and their conditions to be good enough. Often, the property is a forest property that has been owned by the same owner for a long time and the selling is strongly affected by emotions.

Once the seller has accepted the offer, it becomes partially binding. This means that the parties are deemed to have agreed to close the deal concerning the property and if, after this, a party refuses to close the deal, the refusing party must reimburse the other party for the costs caused by the advertising, visiting the property, and other necessary activities related to the selling process.

Once the seller has decided to whom they will sell the property, the broker shall contact the selected party without delay to notify them that their offer has been accepted. The notification of the offer being accepted will be sent via email, but often the broker calls the buyer so that the selling process can be advanced as soon as possible.

Since 2018, real estate agencies have been obligated entities under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (Act on Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing 2017/444). An obligated entity must identify and know its customers and, if the customer’s business or other activities are suspected to contain anything indicative of money laundering or terrorist financing, the matter must be reported to the authorities. This is a statutory obligation of the real estate agency.

In practice, this means that the broker managing the property identifies you as a buyer, asks you to present an identification and writes down your personal information. The identification can also be performed electronically, in which case you verify your identity by using your personal electronic banking credentials when signing. After your identity has been verified, you will be asked whether you are a politically exposed person (a PEP person) or if you have in the last year acted in any politically influential positions. If the owner of the property is a corporation or other undertaking, the broker managing the property shall obtain an extract about the undertaking from the Trade Register, the undertaking’s latest financial statements and bylaws and, from the undertaking, a confirmation about the origin of the assets to be related to the property sale. In addition, the undertaking’s actual beneficiary (a natural person owning over 25% of the undertaking’s shares or voting right) shall be verified and they shall be asked for an account of their political influence.

The next phase in the buying process is preparing for the conclusion of sale. The broker managing the property will be in close contact with you to arrange the conclusion of the sale, which means that you do not need to do anything but ensure that the financing for the property sale is in order by the conclusion of the sale.

The conclusion of the sale can be held anywhere. If your finance for the property sale is in order so that you can pay the price via an online bank, for example, at the conclusion of the sale, the conclusion of the sale itself does not need to occur in a place such as the premises of a bank. You can also consider authorising another person to buy the property for you if you cannot make it to the conclusion of the sale. This is another matter which you can ask the broker for help.

Sometimes, the aim is to conclude the transaction electronically, and this is possible in the National Land Survey of Finland’s electronic real property sales channel. You can ask the broker for more information.

Transfer of title

The title to the property refers to the ownership over the property. For example, only the owner of the property can establish a mortgage and mortgage the property as a security for a debt. The deed of sale rules on the transfer of the title. The title to the property can be transferred immediately at the conclusion of the sale or only after the conclusion of the sale. If 100% of the price is paid at the conclusion of the sale, the title to the property shall transfer immediately upon signing the deed of sale. If it has been agreed that the price shall be paid in instalments, the transfer of the title is usually agreed to take place once the price has been paid in full. Only after the title has been transferred can the property’s new owner apply for a registration of ownership for their acquisition.

Transfer of possession

The right of possession refers to the right to use the asset and assume the profit it creates. For forest properties, the possession means in practice the right to sell timber and assume the sales revenue. On the other hand, the holder of the right of possession is responsible for things such as paying the forestry work costs.  Usually, possession is transferred to the buyer at the same time as the title. The rights of possession and title to the same property can also be held by different persons.

The property sales transaction can be held either traditionally in the presence of a public purchase witness or electronically via the National Land Survey of Finland’s electronic real property sales channel. If the aim is to hold the property sales transaction traditionally in the presence of a public purchase witness, both parties (or their authorised representative) to the transaction and the public purchase witness must be present at the same time at the conclusion of the sale. An electronic property sale transaction on the other hand means that, via the National Land Survey of Finland’s electronic real property sales channel, the broker draws up a deed of sale that both parties to the transaction sign electronically after strong identification, so no physical public purchase witness is needed.

However, if the aim is to hold the property sale transaction traditionally in the presence of a public purchase witness, the broker invites a public purchase witness approved by the National Land Survey of Finland to the conclusion of the sale. The public purchase witness checks at the conclusion of the sale that the deed of sale adheres to the proper form i.e. that the deed of sale has been drafted in accordance with Section 1, Chapter 2 of the Code of Real Estate. Furthermore, the public purchase witness checks the identities of the seller and the buyer and signs the deed of sale’s witness statement to confirm that the parties have been present at the same time, the deed of sale is correct and drafted in accordance with the Code of Real Estate, and the identities of the transaction parties have been checked. For this confirmation, the public purchase witness charges a fee, the paying of which is agreed between the seller and the buyer in the deed of sale. After the conclusion of the sale, the public purchase witness submits a notice of assignment to the National Land Survey of Finland concerning the property sale transaction, as is their duty.

If the transaction is performed electronically, the National Land Survey of Finland charges a fee, the paying of which is also agreed in the deed of sale.

Once the deed of sale has been signed, one originally signed copy of the deed of sale shall be given to each party. One for the seller, one for the buyer and one for the real estate agency.

After the conclusion of the sale, you are the property’s new owner if, at the conclusion of the sale, you paid 100% of the price and the title is in the deed of sale set to be transferred upon payment. You can apply for mortgages for the property and then establish a mortgage, i.e. pledge the property as a security for a debt, for example. You can also conclude other agreements affecting the use of the property, such as a felling contract or a hunting lease.

Buying a property also creates obligations. You must submit to the tax administration a transfer tax declaration concerning the sale of the property within 6 months of the conclusion of the sale. Because this is a property sale, the broker managing the property cannot submit the transfer tax declaration for you. In a property sale, the transfer tax is 4% of the selling price. The transfer tax pursuant to the declaration should be paid at the same time, because the deadline for paying the tax is the same 6 months from the conclusion of the sale and the tax must be paid before applying for the registration of ownership.

You must apply for the registration of ownership for the property you have bought. In practice, this means that your title is recorded in the land and mortgage register maintained by the National Land Survey of Finland. The registration of ownership must be applied for within 6 months of the deed of sale being signed.  The broker can help you with the matter. If the property sale has been arranged via the National Land Survey of Finland’s electronic real property sales channel, the registration of ownership is applied for automatically upon the signing of the deed of sale.