Hungarian Land Ownership Patterns And Possible Future Solutions According To The Stakeholders' View

Following the rent free land use by large-scale farms under the communist regime, it was hoped that the restoration of private ownership of land and land-auctions would revive the land market and that the market would establish real land prices and farm rents in Central and Eastern Europe. In the majority of the former socialist countries of Central Europe the primary land privatization method was restitution to pre-war owners. In Hungary, a mixture of (i) restitution, (ii) division of cooperatively farmed land among cooperatives’ workers and the (iii) sale of land to individuals were applied in land privatization. In lack of a well-functioning land market and realistic land prices (i.e. prices set by the marketable values of a given parcel), prohibition of land ownership by foreigners was a matter of political compromise and that of public opinion. Our study was aimed at identifying key factors determining land ownership patterns with the ban on foreign land purchase in focus. After revealing the stakeholders’ attitude to this prohibition through qualitative interviews, we draw our conclusions concentrating on possible and adequate solutions that are meant to satisfy both domestic and foreign stakeholders.