Foreigner buying house with 'Rolna'/Rural land in Poland - ever possible? Advice/help.

That's not likely at all. You can't just 'pay' to convert land within weeks, otherwise every single piece of farmland would be converted overnight and the value increased considerably. You can read the real situation here - mojbiznesnieruchomosci.pl/koszty-przeksztalcenia-dzialki-rolnej-w-budowlana - as you can see, it can be cheap, but only if the conditions are met. Otherwise the zoning plan needs to be changed, and that's a bureaucratic nightmare.

By the way, the new restrictions on farmland means that you can't purchase it anyway.

PS: Are you aware of what you're getting yourself into by trying to build from scratch? There are plenty of excellent offers available from developers right now for houses, and unless you have a background in construction/architecture, I wouldn't try and build it yourself. There's a lack of quality construction workers in Poland, and the good ones are booked months in advance. The other thing - banks are not very happy to lend money for house construction.

It can be difficult owing to the reasons you mention, but it is doable if you are willing to become obsessed with the project for two years or more. I've never regretted our decision to build. We bought an off-the-peg set of architects plans and paid a local architect to tweak them so we could have what we wanted. A hundred headaches later we got our place. We also know exactly what's behind every wall and under every floor.

One idea is to find a dilapidated house on a plot and demolish it. The plot will already be building land, so no problem there, but be careful when buying anything over fifty years old. The powers that be slap preservation orders on houses that are of no historical value, and which are falling to pieces. It can be a nightmare, and many owners are only relieved of the problem when they have an unfortunate fire which cleanly razes everything to the ground.

I should clarify, We will be doing exactly as the previous poster. Buying a "pre-designed" house and tweaking it to our needs.

My wife is Polish so no problem with buying land etc. Oh, and yes I'm an architectural technician.

We spoke at length with the owner of the house we saw, they bought the land rolna and converted it to Budowlana within a few weeks. They built their house on the land over a 5 year period.

There is a problem. The law changed several months ago, meaning that only farmers can purchase agricultural land. You can't just buy agricultural land as you wish anymore.


Get that idea out of your head straight away. There are completely different norms here, and yes, they will go over the plans with a fine comb to find mistakes.


I assure you that they either had a good contact within the relevant office or they bribed the person to push it through.

If I were you, I'd speak at length with a lawyer who's conversant in this area of the law. The local authority may be willing to convert farming land to residential, or they may not, depending on a dozen factors. Don't buy land until you know for a fact that it is ok to build on.

Your neighbours are talking about half a dozen years ago. Poland has changed a lot since then.

That isn't what I was told by the mayor of our area who I know very well. ;-)

I wasn't saying I was going to redesign it myself, I will be working closely with a local architect to tweak the design and comply with regulations. No problem at all.

Thanks for all the help

Don't put faith in local mayors to help you out. That's one of the worst mistakes you can make as a foreigner, because these relationships often depend on a two way thing - he can agree to rezone the land, but you in turn need to hire his useless and incompetent cousin to do the building works.

:-) I can't say I know his cousin.

I won't be doing anything without knowing all the implications!