Find the owner of a property or parcel
Who owns this building? Below is exactly what you can find for free, when you need a paid request at the Kadaster, and what is allowed once you want to know it for hundreds of buildings at once.
Can you find a property owner for free?
Short answer: partly. The owner's name is not free, but you often get further than you would expect without paying, and sometimes that is already enough to know who to approach.
What is free and public: the cadastral map with parcel boundaries and numbers, all BAG data on the building (construction year, floor area, use, status) and the WOZ value of homes via the national WOZ portal (WOZ values of commercial buildings are not public). For a commercial building you often get considerably further: if a company is registered at the address, you will find it in the KVK Trade Register. Searching by name and address is free; who the directors are and who can sign is in an extract costing a few euros. Note that a company at the address is often the tenant, not the owner.
What is not free: the ownership record itself, meaning the owner's name, the sale price and the transfer date. That is a paid product you request per parcel at the Kadaster. There is no legal free back door to those records, and services claiming otherwise draw on the same paid source in practice.
Three routes, from free to complete
Which one you need depends on the type of building and why you want to know.
Private home
For a home owned by a private individual, the name is only available through a paid ownership request at the Kadaster. You need the parcel number or the address. Free of charge you still get the WOZ value, the construction year and the floor area, plus whether the property changed hands recently.
Commercial building or apartment
If a company is registered at the address, the Trade Register gives you the legal entity for free. Note: that company is often the tenant rather than the owner, so you will still need an ownership request for the owner. For an apartment every owner is automatically a member of the owners' association, and the deed of division sets out how the building is split. In both cases you often know who to approach without needing the Kadaster.
Hundreds of buildings at once
As soon as you want to map a street, district or portfolio, requesting per parcel becomes unworkable. This is a different question from buying an address database: you do not want a list, you want the ownership picture behind an area. Then you work with a structured feed, and stricter rules apply, certainly where private owners are involved. This is what Revelop is built for.
How to request the owner, step by step
The route that works virtually every time, whether it is one building or a whole street.
Find the parcel
Start from the address and locate the matching parcel on the cadastral map. Note the cadastral designation: municipality, section and parcel number. That is the key to everything that follows.
Take the free picture first
Pull the BAG data and the WOZ value, and check the Trade Register against the address. For commercial real estate this often already gives you a name and a contact.
Request ownership information
If it is a private home, or you want the sale price and transfer date, you place a paid ownership request on the parcel number. You get the owner, the cadastral details and the sale price from the most recent deed of sale back.
What may you do with ownership data?
For a legal entity the data is commercial and there is little at stake. For a private owner the name is personal data and the GDPR applies in full. You need a legitimate interest, you must be able to explain why you are processing the data, and the individual has a right of access and objection.
In practice that means: using ownership data to value a property, substantiate a file or make a targeted proposition can fall within the limits. Compiling an address list of private owners and mass-advertising to it uninvited cannot. Revelop is set up for the first category: substantiation and targeted acquisition, with the provenance of every data point traceable.
- Commercial ownership: public via the Kadaster, use within the supply conditions
- Private ownership: personal data, legitimate interest required
- Marketing to private owners: excluded by the Kadaster supply conditions
- Substantiation, valuation and file-building: permitted
Ownership as a layer under your whole territory
For real estate professionals the question is rarely who owns this one building, but who owns everything in this area that matches my criteria.
Ownership tied to the parcel
Every parcel in your territory with its ownership situation, sale price and acquisition date, instead of requesting parcel by parcel.
See movement, not just the state
A property changing hands, a parcel splitting or a mortgage change appearing is a signal. You get it reported instead of discovering it afterwards.
Search on properties, not addresses
Filter on holding period, portfolio size, building type or zoning and keep the owners that match what you are looking for.
Traceable provenance
For every data point you see where it came from and when it was updated, so you can substantiate a file.
Frequently asked questions about finding a property owner
Can I find the owner of a home for free?
Can I search the Kadaster by name?
What exactly do I get with an ownership request?
How do I find the owner of a vacant building?
May I approach owners I found this way?
How current is the ownership information?
Ownership across an entire territory
Stop requesting parcel by parcel. See ownership, sale prices and mutations for every building in your region, tied to the cadastral map and the BAG.