House Purchase

Fine, I got a bit stroppy. I apologise for that, both to the forum and to fluffy personally. Fluffy and I are quite often arguing about how a job should be done and he has given me some very useful pointers that sometimes have turned out to be right, sometimes have turned out to be wrong, but very useful kinda hmmm could be that kind of stuff. So it was more in the nature of a sort of grown-up argument with fluffy about what's what and i should not probably have put it on a public forum.

Please accept my sincere apologies.

atomheart wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

What I am saying is that the morons at Telekom do not have the physical cables in the ground or on the poles to go from the street box to the individual houses and moreover they don't want to do anything about it.

I assure you that those morons would be thrilled to have you as a subscriber, but currently it's not economical for them to build out the required infrastructure and there are lower hanging fruits.

Really having a bad day today?

Ok, maybe they aren't complete morons but they lack common sense and any idea of customer service.   I used morons because they said yes, then they said no, then yes, then no again and finally officially no with a letter. But it took some time and caused us hassle.  I think that's pretty moronic behaviour.

Oh I have had that before, that you sign up to a service and then they find at the last minute that er we don't actually supply that neighbourhood, usually after they have your money. So, what, you don't know where your own infrastructure is? It seems quite common everywhere not just in Hungary. There are Geographical Information Systems databases that you can whack in, if you take a railway for example you tend to run linear from how far it is from the terminus, so every single pole, track and indeed sleeper and rail joint is individually kept track of, when it was last replaced, what it was replaced with, who replaced it, and so on.

When it comes to telecoms infrastructure because basically there are no safety issues beyond a telephone pole coming out and killing you as it falls, they just smack the things anywhere and forget about it, then twenty years later they have to go out and try to work out what is what. There are numbers on the telegraph poles so that they presumably keep track of where the poles are, but they do not keep track of where the wires are. Forall they know that pair might be going to Szolnok and Debrecen and back again.

It is a complete mess that the only way you can find out which exchange your phone may or may not go to is to stick a test phone on the pairs and try ringing the exchange or getting a tone. They have absolutely no idea where their cables run or in what fashion. But they will happily sign you up to a service they can't provide, and then off you go and start all over again.

petromaya wrote:

do you just get all your planning approval to upgrade your house from say 1 bedroom  to 2 bedroom normal kitchen dining room, do you go to OBI and just buy the stuff you need.

Minor renovations are okay without approval. Such as re-roofing as long as you don't raise the roof or use the wrong tile (I wanted to use steel but it was not allowed due to Historical regs here) so you do have to inform yourself. But if you add a room, or anything major, you are suppose to get planning approval. And it is complicated.

Which is why I see a lot of construction here done without any approval at all. All illegal. What happens? Often nothing. The government agencies don't do diddly until someone complains. Unlike in the US where I lived. They will take areal photos and compare them to time past to see if anyone added any rooms, garage, etc. then hit the land owner with fines and back taxes.

Quite frankly, IMHO, expats should follow the rules. Get the paper with all the stamps. Then you are golden. Else the neighbors will use your unofficial construction in a form of blackmail whenever they wish. Say the wrong thing some day, and see how quickly you are reported for that illegal construction. Seen it happen. Not to me, I have all the paperwork -- and in some cases it took years to get.......... which was really annoying. But I sleep fine at night not having to play neighbor games here.

Wow So much information,

so even if a phone line / coax runs past your property telekom probably cant connect you,

electrical / gas / water could be done dodgily aka nightmare

i always lived on water tanks and not sure how drinkable the water supply is in rural villages compared to say the big smoke of pecs and budapest

seems like you have to be rigorous with crossing your T's and dotting your I so you dont ripped into later

i value everyone's feedback its painting a clearer picture in my head

i am def getting a house but going to be ruthless in checking everything

is insurance a thing in Hungary and any other pitfalls i should be worried about
also what do you mean debt attatched to the house so people could rack up huge electric bill and then just leave it for you to pay 

how does that system work

klsallee wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

What is it with boundary problems? Are they no plans given in the deeds when you purchase the property?

None of my deeds came with a property map. I had to get maps special from the land office. And that costs money. Heaven forbid anyone actually spends a bit of money for a map! I am the only person I know who actually has maps of my property. Even so, the maps are rather tiny and pretty useless for real on the ground details. But they are a starting point. For example, all my properties are bizarre shapes. Not squares. Not even simple trapezoids. They have weird angles here and there. And houses walls are built straight. So someone just puts in a straight fence or hedge row parallel to their house wall (as just one example that happened to me). But that property line was not straight and the fence crosses over to someone else's (i.e. my) property. Mostly, because the neighbors also have no clue where their property lines are, there is no issue or conflict. It is when we expats come in with our fancy ideas of exactness when all heck starts to break loose.  Well, I do admit I was a bit annoyed by that, as it was over 30 sq m, which is not a trivial amount of space to me, among other issues.  

As already said, it is complicated.

Wow, tell me about it.  We have the same issue. Odd shaped land.   My house is at an angle inside a trapezoid with three straight rectangular sides.  Why is the house at an angle?  Who knows.   We also don't have maps - we had to get them from the land office.   We don't actually have physical deeds. All we have is a contract, the property number and the extract from the register showing us as owners.

It's a common system to have land register extracts - same in Austria.  Might be the same across Europe other than the UK or Ireland.

One of the issues I forgot to mention  is access. Because the neighbour has about 30m2, I cannot effectively use the space at the side of my house as it's too narrow to drive a car down.  If we move the fence, I can use it for a driveway.

klsallee wrote:

Quite frankly, IMHO, expats should follow the rules. Get the paper with all the stamps. Then you are golden. Else the neighbors will use your unofficial construction in a form of blackmail whenever they wish. Say the wrong thing some day, and see how quickly you are reported for that illegal construction. Seen it happen. Not to me, I have all the paperwork -- and in some cases it took years to get.......... which was really annoying. But I sleep fine at night not having to play neighbor games here.

Well, obviously everyone should follow the rules. If you don't like a rule, work to change it, but while it is there, stick to it. As the good Albert Haddock said, The quickest way to end a stupid law is not to ignore it but to enforce it,

As an expat I think you have to CYA more than others because it is not just the neighbours who might have a go at you but the government, and it is really not worth the hassle to have to get a professional translator to go to court (who will not accept that you understand what they are saying in Hungarian) to do all that malarkey. My wife cannot act as translator because she is an interested party, etc etc. We had to get in a professional translator to do our exchange of deeds and whatever and her English was far poorer than mine or my wife's but she is a professional translator with an OKlevel saying so.

So then you have added expense, extra hassle to sort all that out, suddenly you are in the judicial system and  good luck if you ever find your way out of it. it is just a huge pile of hassle that I have also avoided by making sure all the paperwork is in order first.

This is I think relevant to this topic. I heard as I was outside cleaning my windows the other evening and one of the other neighbours, who is a bit of a gossip, said that my next door neighbour is getting evicted this week or next, nice enough family but forgot a couple of years ago to pay his mortgage. And his electricity (they found him tampering with the meter so they just completely cut him off, I don't know how but presumably just physically removed the cable to the meter or something or whatever). He lost his case in the lower court, went to appeal. Lost his case in the higher court, went to appeal. Lost his case in the uppermost court, now he is out of options and hs to go.

The point of this is that, I didn't know this, there is an owner who has been waiting for about a year to get hold of the property. He has paid for it and everything but cannot move in until this family is evicted,  they are in British English "squatting" i.e. paying no rent, living in what legally is someone else's house, paying no bills or rent, and refusing to move out and taking everything in their power to stay there, which seems now to be exhausted and they must go.

They are a nice enough family and so I have no truck with them at all, but this is what you have to be wary of, that you have to back-check to make sure there are no debts on the property and so on, do your basic checks. Do not assume that the person selling you the house is the legal owner, check it out. and make sure you have vacant possession. The owner was an idiot to be honest, to buy the place without vacant possession.

From start to finish this has taken eighteen months to get through the process. Do you want to buy a house that you can move into next December?

fluffy2560 wrote:

Really having a bad day today?

Apparently yes, since I had to come to this forum to express my biggest frustrations in life and directly question the lives of other members when they disagree. 

It seems very common for people to tamper with the gas meter too. I know Bierce defines "gas meter" as "the family liar in the basement" but pay your bills. tampering with these things is not only just downright theft but can be extremely dangerous, if you tamper with your leccy then you are on a completely unprotected side of the circuit and it will kill you quick as a flash, which is probably how it will kill you. The very first thing we had done when we moved in was to get the gas and leccy out to take off the tampering that the previous owners had done. It seems just "normal" in hungary to fiddle the meter. Well that is called theft, but is also very dangerous, because it is not putting a couple of magnets on the meter like it is in a sitcom, they tend to divert the lines and so on round the meter and you reckon that has been done by a qualified electrician or gas engineer?

petromaya wrote:

Wow So much information,

so even if a phone line / coax runs past your property telekom probably cant connect you,

electrical / gas / water could be done dodgily aka nightmare

i always lived on water tanks and not sure how drinkable the water supply is in rural villages compared to say the big smoke of pecs and budapest

seems like you have to be rigorous with crossing your T's and dotting your I so you dont ripped into later

i value everyone's feedback its painting a clearer picture in my head

i am def getting a house but going to be ruthless in checking everything

is insurance a thing in Hungary and any other pitfalls i should be worried about
also what do you mean debt attatched to the house so people could rack up huge electric bill and then just leave it for you to pay 

how does that system work

You can drink the water out of the tap everywhere as far as I know.  It's very high quality here.

You do need to check and double check - electricity is easy, gas isn't, phone/internet isn't - just depends.  Don't believe what a realtor tells you as they will lie to get a sale.  Oh, gas is in the street or you can get water from Lajos who lives over the road.  It's all nonsense. Lajos might  be a really difficult guy who doesn't want you messing with his pipework.

Example: We looked at a plot, real estate agent said, oh, you can get water from the sports club over there.  Well unknown to her, we had a contact with another landowner who had built a house about 100m away (they used to live in our apartment building).  So we asked them and they said they themselves the water put in and everyone in that area including the sports club was getting their water via their private water main which they had paid upfront for.  So actually they said they would want to recoup their costs paid out for installing water into the area.   It wasn't cheap. We would never have known that expense existed if we didn't have local knowledge and asked the neighbours.

You really need to check on the utilities. Cannot stress it enough.  In some cases, rather than a virgin plot, it's better to buy an older ramshackle place with utilities for as close to land value only and then knock it down and rebuild.  At least you won't have utilities issues.

atomheart wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Really having a bad day today?

Apparently yes, since I had to come to this forum to express my biggest frustrations in life and directly question the lives of other members when they disagree. 

I agree with you. 

I think.

No, if the phone line or coax runs past your property they probably can connect you. But it might cost you a bit, because that line might not actually go anywhere, it may have been removed at the exchange end ages ago or used for another property and the fact that there is a physical bit of cable there is no guarantee that your phone will work. Might do, might not. Dunno what you mean about coax I assume you mean cable telly and internet, well that should be completely separate but is often shared in the same subsurface tunnel in urban areas but not so much in the country, that will be in its own tunnel.

On the whole, gas mains and water run down the pavement or, if you are rural and don't have a pavement, the middle or edge of the street. Those are easy to find and trace you just look for the manhole covers and you follow them and see where they go. Water manholes are marked "Viz" (Hungarian for water) with what always looks to me like a cannabis leaf but apparently is a fountain, gas is marked "Gaz", if you have underground telephone cable it will be usually the post office "Magyar Posta" you just have to look at all the manhole covers, some of which are works of art really, and then you can find out what you have and have not, it is not that tricky, you just have to look. Electricity even in Budapest tends to come on overhead cable so that you can just trace the cable by sight, you should have it coming in on the roof the electricity (leccy in my slang) will be a big thick one and the telephone will be a quite thin one, then you can trace where they go in the property from there, which is usually, er, nonobvious. So you can tell pretty much which utilities you have or have not by just walking along checking telegraph poles,. manhole covers etc.

For example in my family home which is only 40km from budapest city centre they only put in main sewerage about three years ago. maybe four, before that everyone was on septic tank. these are the things you need to take into consideration.

SimonTrew wrote:

Fine, I got a bit stroppy. I apologise for that, both to the forum and to fluffy personally. Fluffy and I are quite often arguing about how a job should be done and he has given me some very useful pointers that sometimes have turned out to be right, sometimes have turned out to be wrong, but very useful kinda hmmm could be that kind of stuff. So it was more in the nature of a sort of grown-up argument with fluffy about what's what and i should not probably have put it on a public forum.

Please accept my sincere apologies.

I half forgive you.  I find myself thinking like a moderator and posting etiquette rules - not my job.  But why half forgive? If I said something wrong, I'd like to be pulled up on it politely (hence the half). 

Trouble is with e-mail or forums is that instant reaction.  It's all to easy to react too rapidly if you have been insulted etc.   If annoyed, it's best to take a break and let it cool down.  I've learnt over the years to have  measured responses and walk away and have  a break before crafting a reply.     Best not to lose one's cool but just to be hypocritical for a moment, a little anecdote at Absolutely Anything Else (click here).

Oh I suppose a simple point to note is that the property number (on the deeds) has nothing to do with the house number.

As you may recall the tax people came round to assess my property to see if what I paid for it was what they thought it was worth, i.e. to assess me for the tax on it (money we had already set aside). This is unusual but because it was basically a bankruptcy sale - they were not quite bankrupt, they would have been had we not bought it - I imagine that they thought it may have been underpriced for the purposes of tax. This is unusual, by all accounts, but not unheard of and in the end they were very nice and assessed it as exactly the value we bought it at and the tax was paid on the dot, of course. Stamp duty/tax on property is 4% so you have to factor that in, and is usually due about three or four months after you buy the property, so set the money aside. If you don't pay it they will simply put a charge on the property and you are back to square one, when you come to sell or whatever now you have a charge on the property because you didn't pay the stamp duty when you bought it, makes it more difficult to sell.

My own house here is strangely divided into two plots even though it has patently only ever been one property but the land registry somehow have drawn a line through the middle of it,  the inner workings of the land registry are a complete mystery. But they are quite helpful on the whole. Whenever dealing with Hungarian officialdom, get there very early and you are first to be seen and done and out, if you go later you are going to be waiting forever while someone wants to argue about a tree in Debrecen or something.

SimonTrew wrote:

No, if the phone line or coax runs past your property they probably can connect you. But it might cost you a bit, because that line might not actually go anywhere, it may have been removed at the exchange end ages ago or used for another property and the fact that there is a physical bit of cable there is no guarantee that your phone will work. Might do, might not. Dunno what you mean about coax I assume you mean cable telly and internet, well that should be completely separate but is often shared in the same subsurface tunnel in urban areas but not so much in the country, that will be in its own tunnel.

No, it's not separate, it's exactly the same cable.   

But just to clear up the exchange, the copper cable to a house might still be at the exchange but unused.  It doesn't work because they take out the line card and use it for someone else's phone.

Both coax for the cable system  and copper a la Telekom work the same way.  There's a filter on the cable (either one is the same) at the premises to distinguish between the high frequencies of Internet and lower frequencies of the phone etc.  For copper, at that split, one part goes to the modem and the phone.  The modem is working over the same cable but you just cannot "hear it" as it's way above a human detectable frequency. 

In the past (or even now depending), at the street cabinet, there's a breakout box (multiplexer) which separates the data from the voice. Hence the voice and data are carried separately onto different fibres or copper cables to the exchange depending on the installation.  Your data is then either sent by backbone fibre (fastest) or even microwave link (slower) to the switching centre for onward routing.   

Obviously these days, it's all on fibre where possible, and your phone is actually just digital the same as every other Internet type device.  They distinguish between them by using virtual channels allocated for specific purposes like IPTV, phone or internet.  Those channels are allocated to the sockets or ports on the back of the device.  So it looks separate but voice or data packets get routed across the network virtual channel the same as any other device.

Yes the coax for telly and internet will be the same cable, or rather it could be. If you have a TV  aerial or satellite on the roof obviously that is going to be on a separate bit of coax (coaxial cable) entirely separate from the one running down the street. But if you have coax running down the street then the cable internet and the telly will be on the same cable, there will not be two bits of coax running down the street. The telly and the internet will run on the same cable.

We are saying the same thing, does that make it clearer?

Very clear and clarified what i was thinking Thank you

SimonTrew wrote:

Yes the coax for telly and internet will be the same cable, or rather it could be. If you have a TV  aerial or satellite on the roof obviously that is going to be on a separate bit of coax (coaxial cable) entirely separate from the one running down the street. But if you have coax running down the street then the cable internet and the telly will be on the same cable, there will not be two bits of coax running down the street. The telly and the internet will run on the same cable.

We are saying the same thing, does that make it clearer?

Actually not completely, it's not clearer as we're talking about two different parts - the distribution in the street and the bit in your house.  Basically it comes off the cable system, into your house, then into a filter which splits into Internet and TV, then to another splitter for distribution to internal (house) cable receivers.  There's no "smart box" between the cable on the pole and where it goes directly through my house. It's very dumb.  In my own house, we're cabled everywhere but unfortunately the signal is rather rubbish so I'm probably going to have to get a distribution amplifier but that's bad design I won't go into.

Here's the kind of stuff needed:



and



and

Hello all,

Just to remind you that the topic to be discussed here is House Purchase.Please get back to the subject.

Anas,
Expat.com Team 

Indeed Anas but there are all these little things and I hope we are helping people to remember. WHat you have there is a four way RF splitter and amp, that will work for your TV aerial but no good on your internet/digital cable, for that you tend to need an inline. This should all anyway be fitted for you by supplier when they connect up the service, they will have stacks of them in the back of the van.

Anas, we do realise that these conversations go to a wider world than just this website so sometimes we say things that we already know, that the OP (Oringal Poster) may know, but to repeat so that they get disseminated eventually to the worldwide web,. We are people who have lived in Hungary for many years, bought houses, fixed up houses, I think that is relevant to mention the pitfalls that may become you over and above those that would become you in any other country. I think that is entirely relevant. It is always the small things that catch you by surprise.

You just have a cap witha 50 ohm or 75 ohm resistor inside that, you don't really need that lump, I have a couple in my garage but you shouldn1t really need it. On analogue it is there to attenuate the signal but with digital you don't really need to attenuate it that way, digital is, er, on or off so the attenuation beyond certain very broad parameters is not important. If you whach a digital signal through one of the things the greater likelihood is you would get nothing at the other end.

I don't take telly off of my internet cable I guess it should be split out somewhere but then, I assume, you are talking about analogue telly going along with the internet? Then you have to split it out for sure, to the modem and to the telly and amp as you say if you want to run several tellies. But then you are running on analogue telly (the norm here) into the back on coax well it is a slightly different jack from UK but you are doing it that way, then that makes sense, you would need the amp and splitter cos if you are running, say 4 tellies off it then you are going to have a resistance load on that that needs to be balalanced, as I said, usually by a 50 ohm or 75 ohm resistor depending on load that is inside the box

SimonTrew wrote:

I don't take telly off of my internet cable I guess it should be split out somewhere but then, I assume, you are talking about analogue telly going along with the internet? Then you have to split it out for sure, to the modem and to the telly and amp as you say if you want to run several tellies. But then you are running on analogue telly (the norm here) into the back on coax well it is a slightly different jack from UK but you are doing it that way, then that makes sense, you would need the amp and splitter cos if you are running, say 4 tellies off it then you are going to have a resistance load on that that needs to be balalanced, as I said, usually by a 50 ohm or 75 ohm resistor depending on load that is inside the box

As far as I know, it's all digital now in Hungary - everywhere.   Analogue went away some years ago so not really relevant. 

For the cable TV/phone/internet, to put it simply, it comes out the wall into a 2 way splitter, one splitter output side has the filter (not a balun but a high pass filter) on it and goes to the cable modem (standard is DOCSIS).  On the other splitter output it goes to another but 4-way splitter for distribution to the rooms.   So that's probably one of my signal problems with one connection - the 4 way splitter loss.  That and the cable TV company crappy/fussy receiver on the end of it.

Anyway, to make Anas happy, the OP wanted to know about the Internet so my advice is to really find out what is available at the house location but in the remodelling, wire the house with conduits so you can pull the right cables - coax or UTP/STP or fibre - or just build them all in anyway, it's cheap enough to just do it.

Thank you Fluffy and Simon for both your indepth explanation

so when i go house inspecting in a month i need to look for the Pit in the middle of the road, gaz, viz, and magyar posta,

im not sure if it got answered but insurance is that even a thing in Hungary

and the address card, to buy a car so i need to buy a house first then do i get an address card or identity card or is that something that has to do with my citizenship verification

Regarding heating and cooling

do you recommend if the house just has a pot belly aka wood stove, installing a wetback gas/wood stove so i can add some radiators for heating around the house, due to i find in australia in winter a electric heatpump doesnt get into you that well

and what are cellars in Hungary used for i see them in every house i look at is it worth water proofing then putting up some studs / insulation / gyprock and making it a room as apposed to raw rock / clay / brick that i have seen

any with the experienced members any pitfall i need to be aware of aka the debt being assigned to the property i didn't even know that was a thing

petromaya wrote:

Thank you Fluffy and Simon for both your indepth explanation

so when i go house inspecting in a month i need to look for the Pit in the middle of the road, gaz, viz, and magyar posta,

im not sure if it got answered but insurance is that even a thing in Hungary

and the address card, to buy a car so i need to buy a house first then do i get an address card or identity card or is that something that has to do with my citizenship verification

Regarding heating and cooling

do you recommend if the house just has a pot belly aka wood stove, installing a wetback gas/wood stove so i can add some radiators for heating around the house, due to i find in australia in winter a electric heatpump doesnt get into you that well

and what are cellars in Hungary used for i see them in every house i look at is it worth water proofing then putting up some studs / insulation / gyprock and making it a room as apposed to raw rock / clay / brick that i have seen

any with the experienced members any pitfall i need to be aware of aka the debt being assigned to the property i didn't even know that was a thing

Yes, you can get insurance. It's not the moon here - we have everything you have there even if it's different.  The only thing is the value of your property as you need to insure on the improved value.

If you plan on wood only for heating, that's not very good.  Like I said, you need two sources of heat in case one is out of action.  I don't think I've seen a water heating stove here but I've seen them in Austria.   In any case, you need to be able to operate the circulation pump and therefore need power.  If you get somewhere with gas, get gas heating/water heating and use the wood burner as needed.  If there's no gas, do the heat pump system and the wood burner.   

Be aware of the ventilation requirements if you have a wood burner.  You need a special vent in the wall  to ensure sufficient airflow/draught. If you have a wood burner, they won't let you have a gas cooker/range.

Magyar Posta is the post office.  They don't do phones. 

If you want Internet and phone, it's Telekom first stop and then it's cable people if it doesn't work there.  But ask the neighbours as they will know.

Cellars are generally all damp here.  They had no clue how to damp proof places way back. If you are looking at tanking it, it'll cost you a packet and it's probably not worth it.  As I said before if you get an old place, you should knock it down and start again (we didn't actually but maybe we should have done).  Then you can have all up to date insulation, tiles, windows etc which will of course, confirm to the latest building regs.  For example, I think now, the minimum insulation thickness is 12cm and might even be rising to 15cm.  It was increasing incrementally.   

Whatever you want is available, it's only about money.

Address cards etc I'll leave for others.

Hello Fluffy Simon on his post #53 said the manhole cover will have

if you have underground telephone cable it will be usually the post office "Magyar Posta"

so that is why i asked that

im armed with a wealth of knowledge so thank you for that

Magyar posta, the post office,  used to run the telephones, that is why the manhole covers often have magyar posta on them. Those are the manhole covers for access to the underground telephone cable, but if it is all strung overhead you won't come across one.

Use your kinda initiative just walk down the street to see what you have got.

There are various Internet providers so that is not a problem, of course it all comes over the same cable so it is just a question of choice really, we are with digi.hu but flip.hu seem to have some good offers at the moment but I'm reluctant to switch right now. We get fibre optic into the house but a place I visited the other week still was on coaxial cable which is perfectly fine, don't need fibre optic it is all a pile of nonsense, a coaxial cable has absolutely no problem with bandwidth, it is a load of marketing hype.

OK, address card, I'll take it. You can get an address card, as long as you have an address. You need to go to the Immigration and Asylum Office, they keep changing its English name, website http://www.bmbah.hu/index.php?lang=en it is down in Buda, best thing get Number 1 tram and it is opposite Ujbuda Center which is not to be confused with Ujbuda Kózpont (which means centre) they do that to confuse foreigners Or you can take Metro 4 to Bikas Park then the 103 bus runs down there but you might as well walk if it is a fine day, it is only about ten minute's walk and there is an Aldi along the way where you can get a csiga (snail) a curly kinda chelsea bun thing half way along your walk, Now I am turning into a nontourist guide. The 133E, 33 also stop rightn outside. There is lots of parking at the back of the Ujbuda Center if you are driving.

Take pretty much every bit of paperwork you have, don't believe what it says on the website they are bound to ask you for a bit of paperwork that they didn't ask you for. But they will after you wait a bit issue you an address card on the spot.

Try to get there before they open as it tends to get very busy with asylum cases etc and you can be hanging around for hours otherwise. The Ujbuda Center has a Tesco and a coffee shop and a Burger King and so on if you need to pass the time but it shouldn't take more than an hour or so.

ok excellent and i can only get that after i buy the house

yep,.   very easy. I see from your reported location you are not in Budapest, I think they are only in Budapest I don't think there are local offices. But if you have an address now you might as well register now.

Maybe I should explain this further, in Hungary, you have two addresses. You have your permanent address, and your living address (I am kinda roughly translating). Your permanent address is where the bailiffs come when you don't pay your bills, where anything legal or official comes, that is your permanent address. It is just an address where they can be sure to get hold of you, serve you legal papers, etc.

Then you have your living address, this is where you actually live. It is quite normal for the two to be different. For many years my permanent address was my family's home in unpronounceablenyaralo but I didn't live there,  I lived in rented accommodation, so my living address was different.  This is perfectly normal and fine

So your house will be your permanent address. Where you are now will be your living address. Got me?

There is an office that will reissue cards right at Nyugati station, they reissued ours when we moved house in about twenty minutes flat. But I don't think they will do it for the first time, I think you have to go to the Immigration Office,.

i will be in a few weeks

that was a reply to a private message I think. Petromaya will be coming to live here permanently in a few weeks.

As for visas, there are other threads on here where people ask the same questions. I as an EU citizen (for now) have just the right to live and work here without needing a visa. What visa you want is really a matter of your personal circumstances and I would suggest you check the website for the Immigration and Asylum Office and work out which one you want to apply for. You will get it at the same place that I mentioned before.

As a non-EU citizen you probably will have to show that you have enough money to support yourself for the duration of the visa, i.e. that you will "not have recourse to public funds" is the way the British put it.

If, just hypothetically you understand, I were travelling from Australia to Hungary, my flight might perchance take me through London, Now, then I get a six month tourist stamp at the airport in London and that will say I am entitled to stay in the UK for six months without recourse to public funds and not to work. I might then, just hypothetically speaking, jump on a cheap flight from London to Budapest where, because it is an internal EU flight, there will not be any questions asked at Budapest Airport beyond my showing my passport. Then I would have right to stay in Europe because London says so and it is stamped right in my passport.

That is all hypothetical of course.

petromaya wrote:

Hello Fluffy Simon on his post #53 said the manhole cover will have

if you have underground telephone cable it will be usually the post office "Magyar Posta"

so that is why i asked that

im armed with a wealth of knowledge so thank you for that

Used to be like that but nope, it's not like that now.

SimonTrew wrote:

As for visas, there are other threads on here where people ask the same questions. I as an EU citizen (for now) have just the right to live and work here without needing a visa. What visa you want is really a matter of your personal circumstances and I would suggest you check the website for the Immigration and Asylum Office and work out which one you want to apply for. You will get it at the same place that I mentioned before.

As a non-EU citizen you probably will have to show that you have enough money to support yourself for the duration of the visa, i.e. that you will "not have recourse to public funds" is the way the British put it.

If, just hypothetically you understand, I were travelling from Australia to Hungary, my flight might perchance take me through London, Now, then I get a six month tourist stamp at the airport in London and that will say I am entitled to stay in the UK for six months without recourse to public funds and not to work. I might then, just hypothetically speaking, jump on a cheap flight from London to Budapest where, because it is an internal EU flight, there will not be any questions asked at Budapest Airport beyond my showing my passport. Then I would have right to stay in Europe because London says so and it is stamped right in my passport.

That is all hypothetical of course.

I thought the OP is also a HU citizen or is applying for citizenship through historical ties or parentage.  With a HU citizenship/passport, it'd just be a trip to the local paperwork office (Okmany-thingy) or the varoshaz rather than the main immigration.  Personally I'd have thought it best to get the HU passport before coming here so it's just walking right in at BUD airport.  Same for other EU too.

yes i am doing the Hungarian citizenship by verification / i want to be in the country in the mean time

i have the means to support myself and my passport / birth certificate will be issued to the Hungarian consulate in Melbourne unless i tell them i am in Hungary and i go into Budapest and pick it up

petromaya wrote:

yes i am doing the Hungarian citizenship by verification / i want to be in the country in the mean time

i have the means to support myself and my passport / birth certificate will be issued to the Hungarian consulate in Melbourne unless i tell them i am in Hungary and i go into Budapest and pick it up

OK. 

But I'd have thought it would easier entry wise to have all this sorted out before arrival. 

I presume you speak Hungarian?   If so, your path will be so much easier.

I think quite the opposite, it is far easier to do it once you are on the ground here. I have lived and worked and got resident's visas etc in four different countries now

Fluffy you are in a different position as you travel for work but do not live in the countries you travel to, and presumably just get some short term business visa or whatever.

But for resident's visas, it is always far easier to do it once you are actually there. For one thing, they can't deny you entry, because you are, er, there. So you are already have a foot in the door.

SimonTrew wrote:

I think quite the opposite, it is far easier to do it once you are on the ground here. I have lived and worked and got resident's visas etc in four different countries now

Fluffy you are in a different position as you travel for work but do not live in the countries you travel to, and presumably just get some short term business visa or whatever.

But for resident's visas, it is always far easier to do it once you are actually there. For one thing, they can't deny you entry, because you are, er, there. So you are already have a foot in the door.

OP has a different situation.  For non-citizens, we have to tread the path to a residence permit.     

As the OP is applying to be a HU citizen and lives in Oz, then there will be a higher cost associated with being here in HU while doing the paperwork.   The OP can live at their own house while waiting for docs to arrive and then leave fully armed.  Seems more logical to me to let the bureaucracy sort it out first in case there's a hiccup. 

For example, if the OP cannot produce evidence of EU (inc HU) citizenship (specifically the ID card or a passport), then explicit permission is needed for the house purchase which could take some time.  Might add 2-3 weeks to the process.  Remember that the purchase process is time limited.  If the purchaser is qualified, it's just a statement in the purchase contract and nothing more is required from 3rd parties (i.e. local government) to verify eligibility.   

But each to their own, whatever.

SimonTrew wrote:

But for resident's visas, it is always far easier to do it once you are actually there. For one thing, they can't deny you entry, because you are, er, there. So you are already have a foot in the door.

Well..... it depends. Different countries have different rules depending on where the person asking for residency is coming from.

When my wife and I arrived from Switzerland I was told I had to go back to the USA and first apply for residency there, as that was the "correct" procedure for US Citizens.

I had to actually write a letter and ask for an exception based on the reason I had not lived in the USA for a decade and had nowhere to go.

SimonTrew wrote:

they can't deny you entry, because you are, er, there

They can still deport you. And if I did not have a good reason, they may have deported me.

petromaya wrote:

yes i am doing the Hungarian citizenship by verification / i want to be in the country in the mean time

Will you be on a tourist visa (which is a huge assumption on my part)? If so, you will need to ask for an extension if the citizenship process takes longer than three months (and it often does).