One way for a person to protect themselves from real estate theft is for the owner to submit several proposals for the registration of encumbrances on their own property, as reported by the business weekly Lider.
That it is unrealistic to expect the protection of the rule of law from increasingly frequent thefts is demonstrated by the example of the recently acquitted (former) judge Ivana Domić from Supetar, who faced accusations of abusing her position by deregistering property owners without their knowledge and awarding illegal registrations on properties to her acquaintances. In addition to registering a new owner on the property of the previous one, thefts most often occur through manipulation with the priority of ownership registration, manipulation of asset transfers between similarly named companies based in different cities, and inversion of land registry numbers.
Encumbrances are recorded and made public (restrictive) circumstances for legal transactions involving real estate, so that third parties cannot claim ignorance of these restrictions. While third parties must initiate complicated procedures to remove (self) registrations, owners can simply withdraw them without complications if needed. In this way, a ‘defensive rampart’ against illegal takeover of property is created, similar to that of Nada Landeka, a property owner from Dugo Selo, who ‘secured’ her property with as many as 13 encumbrances, of which 12 were placed by the owner herself, and only one was taken over from the previous owner.
