The most important change delivered by the new Civil Code (NCC) is the understanding of a building as part of the plot of land on which it was constructed.
After a long hiatus, Czech law returns to the ancient Roman principle superficies solo cedit (the surface yields to the land), which held that all buildings located on a land plot and firmly affixed to the ground were an inseparable part of that land. This Roman law principle still holds sway across almost all of Europe. In the Czech lands, it was valid until 1950, when it was abolished. From that time, Czech law stipulated that the owner of a building could be a different person to the owner of the underlying land plot. The law which applied until December 31, 2013 explicitly stated that a building was not part of the plot of land beneath it. Therefore, a double transfer was always needed, involving the transfer of the building itself and of the individual land plots concerned.
The owner of a land plot was, thus, also the owner of all the buildings located on that plot. According to the new NCC rules, the title to a building can now be conveyed simply by transferring the land plot where the building lies. Some exceptions to the rule persist (e.g. for underground buildings with an independent purpose and engineering networks (utility lines) including buildings and operationally connected equipment) even after January 1, 2014.
Further, the NCC respects the situation created by the previous law, which means that many current building owners do not own the underlying land. Building owners who did not own that underlying land on the date when the NCC took effect, need not fear that the building has become part of the land or the property of the land owner.
If a building and the plot of land beneath it had the same owner on the effective date of the NCC, then from that date, the building and the land plot became a single piece of real property. If the building and land plot owners were different persons at that time, however, then the building did not become part of the land plot. Instead, it remains regulated by the previous law, according to which a building firmly affixed to the ground is a separate piece of real property.
To accelerate the unification of the ownership of land plots and the buildings located on them, the NCC grants pre-emptive purchase rights to persons who own either a plot of land or a building but do not own the attached building/land. Thus, land owners have a pre-emptive right to acquire the buildings built on their land and building owners have the same right to purchase the plot on which their building lies.