How do you check who owns a property in Albania? The ASHK extract (2026)

Three documents answer most questions, and all three come from the state cadastre (ASHK), ordered through the e-Albania portal. Ask the seller for copies issued within the last week: ownership and encumbrances can change any day, and an old extract proves nothing.

The seller, or your lawyer with a power of attorney, orders them online in minutes. Before the deed is signed, the notary checks the digital register again, so the final verification does not depend on paper the seller hands you.

The kartela is organised into six sections (VKM 782/2020, under the cadastre law 111/2018). Two of them decide whether you can buy safely: Section B must name your seller, and Section D must be empty or explained.

• The seller is not the person in Section B. A spouse, parent or sibling "selling for the family" transfers nothing: every registered co-owner signs at the notary, or gives a notarised power of attorney.
• An inheritance that was never registered. If the owner died and the heirs never put themselves on the kartela, the succession has to be completed first: that takes documents and time, not promises.
• Any entry in Section D. A hypothec securing someone's loan, a court seizure, or the statutory mortgage of a legalised home whose plot price was never paid: each one must be released before or at the deed, with the release in writing.
• A title that rests on legalisation that is not finished, or a building registered "without the land". Read our legalisation check guide before going further.

Remember the legal baseline: in Albania a sale of immovable property is valid only as a notarial act that is then registered at ASHK. A private contract, a receipt or a handshake transfers nothing, no matter what was paid.

The e-Albania services for the kartela and the certificate are tied to the owner's account, so in practice the seller orders them, or your lawyer obtains them with a power of attorney. A buyer cannot anonymously pull a stranger's full file, and that is by design.

What you control is freshness and verification: insist on extracts issued days, not months, ago, and rely on the notary's own check of the digital register on the day of the deed. The notary is required to verify ownership in the cadastre before authenticating the sale: that check, not the paper copy, is the final word.